- Due to human activities, many animal species have been in danger of extinction over the past few decades.
- An estimated 10,000 species have been lost every year, which account for half of the world’s wildlife population.
Image: ANDREW KASUKU
Paul Oxton, Founder and Chief Executive Officer - Wild Heart Wildlife Foundation says: "When the last of the animals’ horns, tusks, skin and bones have been sold, will mankind realize that money can never buy back our wildlife.”
As the world marked Wildlife Day on March 3, it’s important to remind ourselves of the need to value conservation and see how best to improve on shortfalls in this area.
Humans and wildlife exist in the same environment and a keen interest in conservation would go a long way in preserving nature for future generations and playing huge roles in economic development.
Importance of conserving wildlife
We must protect our wildlife so our future generations can see all our beautiful animals endangered or not, these animals have the right to live and roam the forests and mountains.
In my view, by conserving and protecting wildlife, we're ensuring that our children can enjoy our natural world. To help protect wildlife, it's important to understand how species are affected by environmental and human influences.
Essentially, the purpose of wildlife conservation is to protect the species by ensuring their survival and to educate people about how they can live in harmony with other species sustainably.
Human activities such as agricultural expansion, logging, and poaching are typically the leading causes of extinction and biodiversity loss in flora and fauna.
Due to human activities, many animal species have been in danger of extinction over the past few decades.
Man-Wildlife conflict remains the biggest challenge that governments and conservationists need to address to protect our natural resources that earn world tourism revenue.
An estimated 10,000 species have been lost every year, which account for half of the world’s wildlife population.
Wildlife holds immense value to the area they inhabit.
Consequently, wildlife is key to maintaining the ecological balance in a given area.
Their sudden disappearance severely disturbs the delicate food chain balance and leads to irrevocable damage to the ecosystem.
As an indispensable part of the ecosystem, wildlife is essential for the survival of interconnected species.
It means eliminating even one species could trample the whole food chain, resulting in a wide-scale extinction of wildlife.
As we reflect, we must endure taking care of wildlife also entails taking care of their natural habitats, such as trees and vegetation, which is critical for medicinal research and the long-term viability of pharmaceutical industries.
Humans heavily depend on agriculture, plants, and animals for food.
Are you aware that wildlife has a significant impact on the growth of these crops? If not, let us go over the concept.
Plants produce fruits and vegetables as a result of a process known as pollination, which is a plant reproduction system in which pollen grains from male flowers are transferred to female flowers, resulting in seed production.
Besides them, many other people benefit from wildlife tourism, such as those who provide fishing equipment, porters, guides, drivers, binoculars for bird watching, mahouts, snorkelling equipment, scuba diving equipment and many more.
Exotic animal products, such as belts, fur jackets, leather bags, jewellery, and ivory crafts, have a large global market.
People who work in these trades are also, to a great extent, dependent on wildlife for their livelihood. Though we should not kill animals to make exclusive products.
Wild animals make a contribution extensively to soil fitness and fertility with the aid of using growing soil vitamins.
Their dung and urine improve the soil with minerals, enabling top off its nutrient content.
Wildlife can also flow vitamins for example, hippo grazing in grasslands at night time returns vitamins to the river through their dung, growing fish productivity.
When it comes to the economy, wildlife preservation creates more jobs.
Large conservation and sustainable management project in Honduras, for example, created over 8,000 jobs and increased community income levels by more than 300 per cent.
Reflection on World Wildlife Day 2023
Maintaining the world’s wildlife is crucial for all life on earth, and understanding the threats to wildlife and the actions needed for conservation requires us to be more critical to achieving visible results.
When we contemplate why nature conservation matters to us, we realise that first, we have to answer the question of why nature matters to us.
My opinion is nature conservation becomes more important to us the moment grasp that everything in nature, including us, are connected.
Nature isn’t just our playground, a punching bag or a bottomless resource.
It responds, withdraws or disappears depending on how it is treated; this world belongs to everyone and future generations.
Our legacy is to protect, conserve and share the resources adding more green energy, growing trees, and adding oxygen into the atmosphere.
Over the years, we have seen many excellent nature conservation initiatives driven by individuals and organisations, which give hope for the future.
When we think about our future generations, we want them to continue to feel happiness in nature among trees and flowers.
We want them to sense the richness and beauty of nature without value judgements. That is why nature conservation matters to us.
The human-wildlife conflict on the rise
Wildlife can pose a direct threat to the safety, livelihoods and well-being of people.
For example, when elephants forage on crops, seals damage fishing nets or leopards kill livestock, people can lose their livelihoods. Retaliation against the species blamed often ensues.
As human populations and demand for space continue to grow, people and wildlife are increasingly interacting and competing for resources, which can lead to increased human-wildlife conflict.
Human-wildlife conflict is recognised as a global concern in the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
There are better ways to reduce the rise in human-wildlife conflict and these sometimes include barriers (fences, nets, trenches), guarding and early-warning systems, deterrents and repellents (sirens, lights, beehives), translocation (moving wildlife), compensation or insurance, providing risk-reducing alternatives, as well as managing tensions between stakeholders involved in these situations.
To reduce human-wildlife conflict effectively, we must reassess the relationship and especially the direct interactions between people and wildlife to improve our coexistence in the future.
We must partner globally to continue to stop the trade of Ivory, and wildlife trophies and cut down on unnecessary hunting of wildlife.
We need to adopt approaches that identify and address the deeper, underlying causes of conflict while developing systemic, context-specific solutions with affected communities as active and equal participants in the process.
Private public and international bodies must increase partnerships and resources, to protect our wildlife.
Conservationist
Twitter - @DiazChrisafrica