WILDLIFE PROTECTION

Wild life

Wildlife protection

Extinct species

Endangered species

Government actions taken for wildlife protection

Technology development for wildlife protection

Wildlife
Wildlife traditionally refers to non-domesticated animal species but has come to include
all plants, fungi, and other organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced
by humans.Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems. Deserts, forests, rain forests, plains,
grasslands, and other areas including the most developed urban sites, all have distinct forms of
wildlife.

Wildlife protection

Wildlife conservation is the practice of protecting wild plant and animal species and their
habitats. The goal of wildlife conservation is to ensure that nature will be around for future
generations to enjoy and also to recognize the importance of wildlife and wilderness for humans
and other species alike.[1] Many nations have government agencies and NGO's dedicated to
wildlife conservation, which help to implement policies designed to protect wildlife. Numerous
independent non-profit organizations also promote various wildlife conservation causes.[2]

According to the National Wildlife Federation, wildlife in the United States gets a majority of
their funding through appropriations from the federal budget, annual federal and state grants, and
financial efforts from programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program ,Wetlands Reserve
Program and Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program.[3] [4] Furthermore, a substantial amount of
funding comes from the state through the sale of hunting/fishing licenses, game tags, stamps, and
excise taxes from the purchase of hunting equipment and ammunition, which collects around
$200 million annually. [5]

Wildlife conservation has become an increasingly important practice due to the negative effects
of human activity on wildlife. An endangered species is defined as a population of a living
species that is in the danger of becoming extinct because of several reasons. Some of The
reasons can be that 1. The species have a very low population, or 2. They are threatened by the
varying environmental or prepositional parameters.

Major dangers to Wild life

Fewer natural wildlife habitat areas remain each year. Moreover, the habitat that remains has
often been degraded to bear little resemblance to the wild areas which existed in the past. Habitat
loss—due to destruction, fragmentation and degradation of habitat—is the primary threat to the
survival of wildlife in the United States. When an ecosystem has an ecosystem) are some of the
ways habitats can become so degraded that they no longer support native Wild life.

•
• Climate change: Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier,
hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe. This intensification of weather and climate
extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. It is also
causing dangerous changes to the landscape of our world, adding stress to wildlife species and
their habitat. Since many types of plants and animals have specific habitat requirements, climate
change could cause disastrous loss of wildlife species. A slight drop or rise in average rainfall
will translate into large seasonal changes. Hibernating mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects
are harmed and disturbed. Plants and wildlife are sensitive to moisture change so, they will be
harmed by any change in moisture level. Natural phenomena like floods, earthquakes, volcanoes,
lightning, forest fires.

• Unregulated Hunting and poaching: Unregulated hunting and poaching causes a major
threat to wildlife. Along with this, mismanagement of forest department and forest guards
triggers this problem.

• Pollution: Pollutants released into the environment are ingested by a wide variety of
organisms. Pesticides and toxic chemical being widely used, making the environment toxic to
certain plants, insects, and rodents.

• Perhaps the largest threat is the extreme growing indifference of the public to wildlife,
conservation and environmental issues in general. Over-exploitation of resources, i.e.,
exploitation of wild populations for food has resulted in population crashes (over-fishing and
over-grazing for example).

• Over exploitation is the over use of wildlife and plant species by people for food,
clothing, pets, medicine, sport and many other purposes. People have always depended on
wildlife and plants for food, clothing, medicine, shelter and many other needs. But today we are
taking more than the natural world can supply. The danger is that if we take too many individuals
of a species from their natural environment, the species may no longer be able to survive. The
loss of one species can affect many other species in an ecosystem. The hunting, trapping,
collecting and fishing of wildlife at unsustainable levels is not something new. The passenger
pigeon was hunted to extinction, early in the last century, and over-hunting nearly caused the
extinction of the American bison and several species of whales.

Population: The increasing population of human beings is the most major threat to wildlife.
Therefore, more waste is generated. Every major threat to wildlife as seen above is directly
related to increasing population of human beings. If the population is altered so is the amount of
risk to wildlife. The less is the population less is the disturbance to wildlife.

Today, the [Endangered Species Act] protects some U.S. species that were in danger from over
_Exploitation, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and
Flora (CITES) works to prevent the global trade of wildlife. But there are many species that are
not protected from being illegally traded or over-harvested.
EXTINCT SPECIES
Anthropologists believe that the Stone Age people and hunter-gatherers relied on wildlife, both
plants and animals, for their food. In fact, some species may have been hunted to extinction by
early human hunters. Today, hunting, fishing, and gathering wildlife is still a significant food
source in some parts of the world. In other areas, hunting and non-commercial fishing are mainly
seen as a sport or recreation, with the edible meat as mostly a side benefit of it.[citation needed] Meat
sourced from wildlife that is not traditionally regarded as game is known as bush meat. The
increasing demand for wildlife as a source of traditional food in East Asia is decimating
populations of sharks, primates, pangolins and other animals, which they believe have
aphrodisiac properties.

The rate of extinctions of entire species of plants and animals across the planet has been so high
in the last few hundred years it is widely believed that we are in the sixth great extinction event
on this planet; the Holocene Mass Extinction.
Destruction of wildlife does not always lead to an extinction of the species in question, however,
the dramatic loss of entire species across Earth dominates any review of wildlife destruction as
extinction is the level of damage to a wild population from which there is no return.[clarification
needed]

The four most general reasons that lead to destruction of wildlife include overkill, habitat
destruction and fragmentation, impact of introduced species and chains of extinction.[8]

Chains of extinction[edit]
This final group is one of secondary effects. All wild populations of living things have many
complex intertwining links with other living things around them. Large herbivorous animals such
as the hippopotamus have populations of insectivorous birds that feed off the many parasitic
insects that grow on the hippo. Should the hippo die out, so too will these groups of birds,
leading to further destruction as other species dependent on the birds are affected. Also referred
to as a domino effect, this series of chain reactions is by far the most destructive process that can
occur in any ecological community.
Another example is cattle egrets found in India. These birds feed on insects on the back of cattle,
which helps to keep them disease-free. Destroying the nesting habitats of these birds would
cause a decrease in the cattle population because of the spread of insect-borne diseases.
These are some common examples of wild animals that become extinct and they are listed
below-:
Indian aurochs

The Indian aurochs is a subspecies of the extinct aurochs. It is considered as the ancestor of the
zebu cattle, which is mainly found in southern Asia and has been introduced in many other parts
of the world, like Africa and South America. In contrast, the cattle breeds, which are native to
Europe, the Near East, and other parts of the world, are descendants of the Eurasian aurochs. The
Indian aurochs disappeared in the Holocene, probably around 2000 BC.

Contents

1 Description

2 Range

3 Domestication

4 De domestication: feral zebu cattle

5 External links

6 References

Description

The Indian aurochs is known from fossil and sub-fossil remains. These show relatively slight
differences to the Eurasian aurochs The Indian aurochs was probably smaller than its Eurasian
counterpart but had proportionally larger horns.[3] Because the range of the aurochs probably
was continuous from Portugal to India, it is uncertain whether there was a clear distinction or a
continuum between the Eurasian and Indian subspecies.[3]

The Indian aurochs diverged from the Eurasian aurochs about 100,000 - 200,000 years ago. This
has been shown by comparison of DNA from zebus cattle breeds, the living descendants of these
two aurochs forms.[4] The Indian aurochs is sometimes regarded as a distinct species.[5] Zebu
cattle is typically distinguished from cattle by the presence of a prominent shoulder hump.[6]

Range

The aurochs originated about 2 million years ago in India and spread westwards.[3] The Indian
aurochs roamed in the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs throughout the Indian subcontinent from
Baluchistan, the Indus valley and the Ganges valley to south India. Most remains are from the
north of India, on the Kathiawar Peninsula, along the Ganges, and from the area of the Narmada
River. However, bone remains of the Indian aurochs are present in the south as well, such as the
Deccan area and along the Krishna area. The wild Indian aurochs survived into times, when it
was domesticated. The youngest known remains, which clearly belong to wild Indian aurochs are
from Karnataka, southern India, with an age of about 4200 years old.

Possible predators preying on the wild type of the zebu were big cats such as lions, leopards and
tigers, as well as other predatory mammals such as dholes and even spotted hyenas during
prehistoric times.

Domestication

Feral zebu cattle roaming free at Ghana National Park, India

The first centre for domestication of the Indian aurochs was probably the Baluchistan region in
Pakistan. The domestication process seems to have been prompted by the arrival of new crop
species from the Near East around 7000 BC. It is possible, that Indian aurochs were
domesticated independently in Southern India, in Gujarat and the Ganges floodplains. Domestic
zebu are recorded from the Indus region since 6000 BC and from south India, the middle Ganges
region, and Gujarat since 2000-3500 BC. Domestic cattle seem to have been absent in southern
China and southeast Asia until 2000-1000 BC.[7]
De-domestication:

A feral population of zebu cattle is found in the Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh.[8] The
zebu were left there as a potential prey for Asiatic lions and will thus fill the ecological role of
their wild ancestors.

Dodo’s
The dodo is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of
Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Its closest genetic relative was the also extinct Rodrigues
solitaire, the two forming the subfamily dodo the family of pigeons and doves. The closest extant
relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the
nearby island of re-union, but this is now thought to have been confusion based on the Reunion
ibis and paintings of white dodos.

Sub-fossil remains show the dodo was about 1 meter (3 ft 3 in) tall and may have weighed 10.6–
21.1 kg (23–47 lb) in the wild. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings,
paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Because these vary considerably, and
because only some illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specimens, its exact
appearance in life remains unresolved. Similarly, little is known with certainty about its habitat
and activities. It has been depicted with brownish-grey plumage, yellow feet, a tuft of tail
feathers, a grey, naked head, and a black, yellow, and green beak. It used gizzard stones to help
digest its food, which is thought to have included fruits, and its main habitat is believed to have
been the woods in the drier coastal areas of Mauritius. One account states its clutch consisted of
a single egg. It is presumed that the dodo became flightless because of the ready availability of
abundant food sources and a relative absence of predators on Mauritius.

The first recorded mention of the dodo was by Dutch sailors in 1598. In the following years, the
bird was hunted by sailors, their domesticated animals, and invasive species introduced during
that time. The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. Its extinction was not
immediately noticed, and some considered it to be a mythical creature. In the 19th century,
research was conducted on a small quantity of remains of four specimens that had been brought
to Europe in the early 17th century. Among these is a dried head, the only soft tissue of the dodo
that remains today. Since then, a large amount of sub-fossil material has been collected on
Mauritius, mostly from the Mare aux swamp. The extinction of the dodo within less than a
century of its discovery called attention to the previously un-Resolved problem of human
involvement in the disappearance of entire species. The dodo achieved widespread recognition
from its role in the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and it has since become a fixture
in popular culture, often as a symbol of extinction and obsolescence. It is frequently used as a
mascot on Mauritius.

ENDANGERED SPECIES
The South China tiger was estimated to number in the 40,000s in the early 1950s. But over the
next decades, thousands were killed as the subspecies was hunted as a pest. The Chinese
government banned hunting of the tiger in 1979. But by 1996, its population had declined.
Today, the South China tiger is considered by scientists to be “functionally extinct” because it
has not been sighted in the wild for more than 25 years. South China tigers are only found in
zoos and in South Africa, where there are plans to reintroduce captive-bred tigers back into the
wildlife if a few individuals remain, no existing protected areas or habitat are sufficiently large,
healthy or undisturbed enough to sustain viable tiger populations. If any South China tigers do
remain in the world, they would be found in the mountain subtropical forest of southeast China,
close to provincial borders. But that habitat is highly fragmented, with most blocks smaller than
200 square miles and not large enough to sustain a tiger population

SAVE MAMTAS:
In Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Japan and the Philippines mass fisheries seriously threaten
manta ray populations. New demand from Asia for dried gill used in traditional medicines has
dramatically increased the Indonesian fisheries, threatening the local populations. The gills are
used interchangeably in Chinese medicine and according to Chinese practitioners, gill help to
clear away heat and toxic material from the body and aid blood circulation. On the street in
Southern China prices vary according to size and manta gills can sell for $100.00 USD per
pound.
GOVERNMENT ACTONS TAKEN FOR WILDLIFE PROTECTION
Project Tiger:
The Government of India launched Project Tiger on April 1, 1973 in the Corbett National Park
as a consequence of the concrete international effort to create the awareness and raise funds for

saving the tiger. This international effort was led by Guy Mount fort of the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF).

It ensured maintenance of a viable population of tigers in India for scientific, economic,

aesthetic, cultural and ecological values, and to preserve for all times, areas of biological

importance as a national heritage for the benefit, education and enjoyment of the people”.
Initially, nine tiger wildlife reserves (with 268 tigers) constituted the Project Tiger network.

As of 2008, there were 28 tiger reserves in 17 states, covering an area of 37,761 sq. km. The

Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972 was amended in 2006 to incorporate the creation of the National
Tiger Conservation Authority. The first meeting of the National Tiger Conservation Authority

was held in November 2006. With the amendment of this Act, a Wildlife Crime Control Bureau
was also subsequently established.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests provides necessary technical and financial support to

the state governments for wildlife conservation under various centrally sponsored schemes

(CSS). The states receive 100 per cent financial assistance for non-recurring items and 50 per
cent for approved recurring items. The punishment in cases of offence within a tiger reserve has
also been enhanced.

Following are some of the administrative measures taken by the environment and forests

ministry:
i. Strengthening of anti-poaching activities, including special strategy for monsoon patrolling by
providing funding support to tiger reserve states.

ii. Provision of hundred per cent central assistance to 17 tiger reserves as an addition for
deployment of “tiger protection force”.

iii. Constitution of a multidisciplinary Tigers and Other Endangered Species Crime Control

Bureau, with effect from June 2007, comprising officers from police, forest, customs and other
enforcement agencies to effectively control illegal trade in wildlife.

iv. Approval for eight new tiger reserves.

v. Evolution and mainstreaming of a scientific methodology for estimating the number of tigers.

vi. Identification of approximately 31,111 sq. km of core or critical tiger habitat in 17 states.

The Project Tiger guidelines have been further revised and include funding support to states for

enhanced village relocation; rehabilitation of communities involved in traditional hunting and

mainstreaming livelihood and wildlife concerns in forests; and fostering corridor conservation
through restorative strategy to stop habitat fragmentation.

International Cooperation in Tiger Conservation:

The memo of understanding with Nepal on controlling trans-boundary illegal trade in wildlife
and conservation.
i. A protocol on tiger conservation with China.

ii. A Global Tiger Forum of Tiger Range Countries for addressing international issues related to
tiger conservation.

iii. A resolution along with China, Nepal and Russia for restricting breeding tigers on a
commercial scale and for adopting measures to conserve wild tigers.

Tiger Reserves:
The selection of reserves is guided by representation of eco typical wilderness areas across the

bio geographic range of tiger distribution in the country. Project Tiger is a custodian of major

gene pool in the country. It is also a repository of some of the most valuable ecosystem and
habitats for wildlife.

The Tiger Reserves are constituted on a ‘core-buffer strategy’. The core area is kept free of biotic

disturbances and forestry operations, where collection of minor forest produce, grazing human

disturbances are not allowed within. However, the buffer zone is managed as a ‘multiple use area

with twin objectives of providing habitat supplement to the spillover population of wild animals

from the core conservation unit, and to provide site-specific eco developmental inputs to
surrounding villages for relieving the impact on the core.

No relocation is shown in the buffer area, and forestry operations, Non-Timber Forest Produce

(NTFP) collection and other rights and concessions to the indigenous communities are supposed
to be permitted in a regulated manner to complement the initiatives in the core unit.

Non-government involvement
As major development agencies became discouraged with the public sector of environmental
conservation in the late 1980s, these agencies began to lean their support towards the “private
sector” or non-government organizations (NGOs).[10] In a World Bank Discussion Paper it is
made apparent that “the explosive emergence of nongovernmental organizations” was widely
known to government policy makers. Seeing this rise in NGO support, the U.S. Congress made
amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act in 1979 and 1986 “earmarking U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) funds for biodiversity”.[10] From 1990 moving through
recent years environmental conservation in the NGO sector has become increasingly more
focused on the political and economic impact of USAID given towards the “Environment and
Natural Resources”.[11] After the terror attacks on the World Trade Centers on September 11,
2001 and the start of former President Bush’s War on Terror, maintaining and improving the
quality of the environment and natural resources became a “priority” to “prevent international
tensions” according to the Legislation on Foreign Relations Through 2002[11] and section 117 of
the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.[11] Furthermore, in 2002 U.S. Congress modified the section on
endangered species of the previously amended Foreign Assistance Act.

Active non-government organizations

Many NGOs exist to actively promote, or be involved with wildlife conservation:

 The Nature Conservancy is a US charitable environmental

organization that works to preserve the plants, animals, and
natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth
by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive.[12]
 World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-
governmental organization working on issues regarding the
conservation, research and restoration of the environment,
formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its
official name in Canada and the United States. It is the world's
largest independent conservation organization with over 5 million
supporters worldwide, working in more than 90 countries,
supporting around 1300[4] conservation and environmental
projects around the world. It is a charity, with approximately 60%
of its funding coming from voluntary donations by private
individuals. 45% of the fund's income comes from the
Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.[13]
 Wild Team
 Wild-life Conservation Society
 Audubon Society
 Traffic (conservation program)
 Born Free Foundation