Conserving Biodiversity in Africa
Due to human activities animals globally have become endangered, and as you may have read in the Risks of human intervention this can be dangerous because ecosystems depend of certain organisms to get a job done, without a certain organism the ecosystem can die resulting in a greater loss of life. However instead of letting animals die in the wild by themselves, us humans have adopted methods of preserving these creatures, methods including: Conservation laws, ex-situ/in-situ conservation, domestication, and captive breeding, all which of will be talked about today.
Thanks to African wildlife conservation, new laws have been erected to protected endangered species that are being killed off. Some methods of conservation have gone as far as protecting animals for 24 hours to avoid poaching, this shows us the importance of keeping one type of species alive. In Africa Humans also use in-situ conservation, to help preserve an animals natural habitat, many reserves are created in order to help preserve animal life. These parks can range from elephant to rhino reserves and are open to the public. In-situ conservation in advantageous because it is cheap and convenient to protect and keep animals in their natural habitats, it is also more natural. Humans also use ex-situ conservation in Africa by moving animals to zoos or protective areas. On the right you can see a hippo that came from Africa featured at the Toronto Zoo. Human domestication is another form of ex-situ conservation. Although we humans were the ones responsible for endangered species, scientists consider domestication as a great danger. Thus we have learned to domesticate animals giving them artificial habitats, protection, food, water and a controlled environment. While these animals are in domestication the are often cared for and given time to breed among each other with no natural pressures, this allows an animal to grow in population and become more successful, moving farther and farther from extinction. An example of a species in captivity is the western lowland gorilla, which is the most numerous of all the gorilla species, they can be found in placed all throughout Africa such as Cameroon, The Central African Republic, Congo and Gabon. They can be distinguished by their smaller size and brown-grey coats of fur. Due to poaching this gorilla species has declined by 60% in the last 20 - 25 years, and astounding number for such a large populated species, if all forms of poaching and threats in general were removed it would take up to 75 years for the original population to grow back naturally, what WWF (the foundation helping this cause) is doing is creating reserves of these gorillas and making it a tourist attraction. Using the money earned by the tourists WWF protects the gorillas with laws and protected habitats. Although captivity is useful for the prolonging of an animal, their are some setbacks such as factors that contribute to the acyclicity of a animal for example the elephant. According the the national zoo, elephants held in the zoo were found to not be having their menstrual cycle. Setting aside this and the fact that animals could still be endangered once being released back in to the wild, human intervention with animals also is a majority of benefits. |
Black Rhinos (Diceros Bicornis) are under 24-Hour Surveillance for poaching protection. - African rhino poaching crisis. (n.d.).WWF. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/rhinoceros/african_rhinos/poa
A very Exciting photo of a Hippopotamus from the Toronto Zoo
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A cute picture of a western lowland gorialla - Western Lowland Gorilla. (n.d.).WorldWildlife.org. Retrieved April 27, 2014, from http://worldwildlife.org/species/western-