Conservation of wildlife: The importance of preservation of species and their environments

By: Cassandra Buchanan

Conservation of species and preservation of their respective ecosystems can have a direct and positive impact on human life.

Scientifically speaking, the status of Earth’s environment has been progressively declining. With a rise of global warming, heavy pollution, and climate change, our environment as we know it is at risk of deterioration.

Humans heavily influence the way animals live, and directly affect their habitat. However, whether humans realize the extent of it or not, the human race is interconnected with wildlife species. Therefore, damaging and polluting their homes-- though it may not seem to be a pressing issue, is also putting the human race at risk as well.

According to Craig Aumack, assistant professor at Georgia Southern University, this concept is defined as a transboundary issue.

“We refer to it as transboundary issues, the idea that if we lived in environments where you saw animals or the environment steadily declining or dwindling all around you, that would have a more immediate impact on your relationship with the environment and your behavior.”

Air pollution and water pollution are two of the main contributors to environmental pollution caused by human life. Research shows that air pollution rose roughly 7 percent in 2020. According to the National Resources Defense Council, 80 percent of the world’s water is wastewater that is highly untreated, and then dumped back into the environment.

The highly contaminated water is put back into the world’s rivers, oceans, and streams-- making it extremely dangerous for not only humans, but the animals that directly consume water from these bodies of water.

Humans contribution to the deterioration of these environments has led to an increase in animal extinction. According to Jamie Roberts, associate professor at Georgia Southern University, habitat loss and pollution is almost inevitable when cities are built and because of this, humans put a lot of strain on other species.

“Throughout earth’s history, species have gone extinct,” said Roberts. “But the sobering thing is that especially since humans became really abundant on earth, around the 1500s and technology has gotten more advanced, we have made the current extinction rate of species 10 or more times higher than it would have been.”

Unfortunately, the everyday activities that humans participate in contribute to deterioration of the environment according to Aumack.

“When we drive we’re producing carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide from car exhaust, when we burn fossil fuels we’re releasing a lot of sulfates, nitrates, and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Aumack said. “But that doesn’t immediately hang over our area, air currents shift and it becomes out of sight, out of mind.”

The increase of pollutants and toxins in the atmosphere have contributed to what is known as global warming. Global warming adds stress to ecosystems because of temperature rises, water shortages and increased fire threats.

“Global warming was ignored, or at least not as much as a major issue because the majority of the impact was occurring at the poles, at the most northern and southern latitudes, and those are not areas humans really exist,” Aumack said. “So people didn't see the changes that were occurring in their day-to-day life, but now we’re becoming more aware because those changes have reached us.

However, there are several ecosystems that are managed by humans-- especially forests. This means that humans are making complicated decisions about what happens to these landscapes. According to Ray Chandler, professor of biology at Georgia Southern University, these decisions prose consequences for wildlife.

“In terms of forestry, those decisions can have consequences for wildlife,” Chandler said. “You can log it, burn it, selectively log it-- depending on how you do the management it has different consequences for different animals. It can be a difficult decision to make, but typically they make evaluations about the relative value of those species upon making these decisions.”

The ecosystems of the world are interconnected with each other and human life. In terms of relevance to human life, most people only focus on food security, but conservation of wildlife and the environment also matters ethically and is a concern for every living being, whether fully realized or not.

According to Roberts, “we don’t know which of those species the ecosystem can do without until it all falls apart. Think of an ecosystem as a big machine, we want to save all of the parts, because the machine may stop working.”