ENDANGERED SPECIES

WHY DO WE HAVE ENDANGERED SPECIES?

We now focus on what has happened as a result of pollution and human activity- the extinction of species. When air, land or water gets polluted, plants die and the land or marine animals gets affected. Noise and light pollution add to their stress levels. An entire species can go extinct because of human activity. When a species-whether plant, animal or insect-goes extinct, the food chain gets disrupted causing a domino effect For more information visit 

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/endangered-species/

As the Natural energy hub ( https://naturalenergyhub.com/pollution/endangered-species-due-pollution/) highlights, any ecosystem can be affected by multiple types of pollution. Just as human health is affected by different toxins, plants and animals are also affected. Toxic chemicals are found in pristine forests and the blood of Arctic animals. Litter is found floating deep in the oceans far away from any land. Light and noise pollution is affecting the routine patterns of birds and animals.

Toxic chemicals, organic and inorganic contaminants enter the organisms through absorption by skin or ingestion of polluted food and water. Animals higher in the food chain accumulate these toxins in higher and higher concentrations. This is called Bio-magnification. When the higher level predators have higher level toxins, they are likely to suffer the diseases, birth defects, genetic mutations and other deleterious effects.

Pesticides kill beneficial insects, soil bacteria and fish along with unwanted pests.

Water pollution reduces the quality of the water. The pollution can even be radioactive in nature. Dead Zones are a feature of eutrophication. This occurs when algae blooms proliferate over a body of water and suck out all oxygen from the water. No other organism can survive in these Zones. These harmful algal blooms are also called red tides or brown tides because of their appearance in the water.

Acid rain which occurs as a result of the mixing of sulphur dioxide in the air and water vapour and its precipitation, changes the chemical composition of both soil and land. It leads to the death of fish and on land it affects the growth of trees.

Garbage patches in the ocean are large areas of floating debris primarily consisting of plastic. These accumulate in ocean gyres carried here by the ocean and wind currents. They make the oceans toxic; they damage corals reefs and entangle small and large animals in the debris. Whales, seals, walruses, dolphins, manatees and penguins are affected by the plastic debris in the seas. Even microscopic organisms such as krill and zooplankton consume plastic debris and pass it up the food chain.

In the Arctic the sounds of oil and gas pollution are so loud that many sea mammals and other life forms have difficulty breeding and feeding. Light pollution disturbs the normal rhythms of animals and birds just as it does to humans. Hundreds of migratory birds are misdirected from their normal routes by city lights. Turtle Hatchlings die every year as they move towards lights along the beach opposite to the direction they are supposed to take to the sea. Many insects are attracted to the street lights in the nights and their populations are on the decrease.

As habitats shrink in size due to human encroachment the animals live in more crowded fashion. There are negative effects such as lower nutritional condition, reproduction and survival. The polar caps in the Arctic are shrinking due to global warming. The ice is melting at a fast rate. The hunting and transportation opportunities for the polar bear are shrinking. Shortage of space affects feeding and reproduction routines of these mammals. Loss of forest cover leads to the reduction of several beloved species such as the tiger and the panda and scores more all over the world.

In Asia wetlands face multiple threats as large scale reclamation, pollution, and deforestation are causing them to shrink. These directly and indirectly support millions of people by providing ecosystem services such as protection from natural hazards, ground water recharge and discharge.

Wetlands are a temporary and permanent habitat to a variety of plants fish and wildlife as mammals’ amphibians reptiles and birds by providing food, habitat, breeding grounds and shelter.

As a part of pest control many times new species of plants, insects, animals and even insects are added to the ecosystem . These compete with the beneficial species for food shelter and all other resources. They can also introduce diseases to which the native species are not resistant. Hence native species decline in number.

Endangered refers to those species which are close to extinction. Endangered is next in line to critically endanger as considered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Overhunting combined with climate change and loss of habitat are leading factors in bringing a species into this list.

Usually much attention is given to the larger mammals like the tiger, elephant, bison whales etc. insects are not usually noticed in this scenario. But just like plants insects are also a foundation block for the food chain. Plant eating insects or butterflies  perish when the plants they feed on die off in large numbers. Roughly 600 species are at risk of extinction, of these 48 are in the US alone.

In the same way plants species are also getting extinct. Plants are the basic food source of many big and small species. They provide shelter for many birds’ insects and animals. Plant are affected by pollution of the land, air and water. climate changes, droughts floods, natural and man-made disasters. Among the disappearing plants are milkweed plants. The plants and animals in the world now are only about 50% of what was 75 years ago. Given another half of a century the remaining half is also likely to vanish unless strict rules and regulations are enforced.

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https://naturalenergyhub.com/pollution/endangered-species-due-pollution/

VIDEO LESSONS

Let us watch this 6.16 mins presentation of Pennsylvania Wild Resource Conservation Program, Cosmo's World that explain how species get endangered because of all the pollutions  that we discussed during Ecocamp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iu8bbntr80

While there are numerous species on the red list put together by World wild life federation

https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/directory,  we will focus on one  representative species from each category: land animal, marine animal, plant, bird and insect

Here is a 1.15 minsNational geographic video on the elephant. Each of us has to become an animal lover and animal champ so this lovable mammal gets off the endangered list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJbFthhZRHY

Our focus species from the marine family is the blue whale. Here is a 3.56 minsNational Geographic video about them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgiPTUy2RqI

The Burrowing Owl represent all  endangers bird species .Watch this 3.57 minsvideo on the bird that might go extinct unless we do something about it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_aQdBPQmY

Mead’s milkweed is a long-lived, tallgrass prairie herb belonging to the milkweed family (Asclepiadaceae). It is on the federally threatened species list. Read this pdf to know more about this endangered plant

https://www.fws.gov/midwest/Endangered/plants/pdf/meads-fs.pdf

When a plant goes extinct, the species that eat and need it are under threat

KIDS CAN HELP

Aiden Wang  is a 11-year-old resident of West Windsor , and he is already making a contribution to saving the monarch butterfly: he has hatched 93 of them by growing milkweed plants. Lets meet him and watch the  film titled Aiden’s Butterflies, that was made on him and screened at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival in April 2018. Aiden Wang  is a11-year-old resident of West Windsor , and he is already making a contribution to saving the monarch butterfly: he has hatched 93 of them by growing milkweed plants.

https://communitynews.org/2018/04/11/butterfly-whisperer-11-year-old-lepidopterist-documentary/

Here is a newstory about him  from West Windsor Community news

https://communitynews.org/2018/04/11/butterfly-whisperer-11-year-old-lepidopter

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A townhome in West Windsor might seem an unlikely haven for the threatened monarch butterfly. But 11-year-old resident Aiden Wang has created a safe place for these creatures to nest, or rest on what might be a 3,000-mile journey from Canada to Mexico.

Back in 2014, environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect monarch butterflies, the only species that migrate such distances, as endangered. Due to pesticides and development, the rapid loss of milkweed—their only natural habitat—spelled doom for their populations.

The same year, Wang bega n his own project to help the embattled monarchs, and inspired a short documentary by film producer Olga Talyn, a Plainsboro resident.

The film, Aiden’s Butterflies, will be screened at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival this month on Saturday, April 14, at 1 p.m. at the Princeton Public Library.

Wang started the project when he was a first grader at Maurice Hawk School as part of a class activity to nurture monarch eggs into caterpillars, watching them spin chrysalises and unfurl wet, orange wings. It inspired him to grow milkweed at home.

Without a big backyard, he did what he could, sowing the seeds in a narrow bed that wraps around his house. Lined up neatly against the sliding doors are now five black pots, dedicated solely to milkweed.

The pots look lifeless this time of year, filled with dark soil and stubby hollow stalks. Wang says that in the summer, the milkweed roots will sprout big, leafy plants that rival his height—more than four feet tall.

As his milkweed plants mature, more monarch butterflies are choosing to nest on their leaves. In addition to pesticide-free nectar and a nesting spot, these butterflies enjoy top-notch childcare.

“The survival rate for monarch butterfly eggs in the wild is 5 to 10 percent,” Wang says. When raised indoors, their survival rate shoots up to 95 percent.

According to his detailed records, of the 93 eggs he nurtured from tiny dots to winged creatures, just one died (and though the ink changes from marker to pen to pencil, each butterfly is numbered and meticulously tracked).

Over the summer, he checks his milkweed daily for butterfly eggs. When he finds one, he carefully snips a square from the leaf, storing them in dozens of plastic containers to hatch, protecting them from torrential downpours and predators like wasps. When the caterpillars look mature enough to spin a chrysalis, he transfers them to a netted cage for their final transformation.

In short, it’s tedious work that takes up much of the summer. And this year, he expects closer to 200 butterflies, or double the amount of work.

The problem is the opposite of the one he faced when first starting out. For the first two summers, the milkweed was so young and small it didn’t attract any monarchs. And the first insect eggs he found on its leaves actually belonged to a moth.

“I was so surprised,” he says. He had to remove them to save his plants for the butterflies. “They eat a lot more [milkweed] than the monarch.” Though they don’t kill the perennials, they can destroy growth for that year.”

The third year, he raised 25 butterflies. And last summer, he raised 93. He says that he might end up nursing 1,000 eggs in no time.

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