how to prevent species extinction essay

How to help protect endangered species

As you read this, countless species are on the brink of extinction. We live in an era where global biodiversity faces threats that are caused in large part by human actions.

But there are things we can do to help. Individuals committed to conservation can take collective action to protect endangered species from extinction. Here we explore some practical strategies that you can implement in your daily life to protect endangered wildlife.

16 things you can do to help endangered species

Conservation efforts don’t just have to be spearheaded by large organizations—individuals can make a difference, too. The choices we make in our day-to-day lives can have a positive impact on threatened species. 

Buy products from sustainable sources

Choosing cruelty-free alternatives helps reduce the demand for goods that contribute to the endangerment of species. Avoid buying products made from animal skins, scales, ivory, or other endangered animal products. 

Though it can seem like a personal choice that only affects you, you directly contribute to wildlife conservation by actively purchasing from sustainable sources. 

If enough people make these choices, businesses will be encouraged to adopt ethical practices and invest in more sustainable alternatives. 

Advocate for conservation

Using your voice to bring attention to the plight of endangered species educates others and builds support for conservation causes.

This can be as simple as talking to your friends and sharing resources or links on social media, along with attending events, signing petitions, and writing to elected officials.

Not sure where to start? We have a list of active petitions that you can sign to help ensure your voice is heard—from helping to save North Atlantic right whales from extinction to forming a national biodiversity strategy. 

Avoid plastic use and littering, and recycle properly

Ensuring that you properly dispose of waste and recyclables can play a huge part in protecting the environment and animal populations. Recycling plays a pivotal role in breaking the cycle of plastic pollution by diverting materials from landfills and ensuring that plastics don’t end up endangering wildlife through ingestion or entanglement.

Beyond proper recycling, try to use alternatives to plastic products (especially single-use plastics). Products like metal straws instead of plastic ones, beeswax wraps instead of cling film, and reusable water bottles can all make a difference. 

Learn more about wildlife and educate others 

Empower yourself through knowledge. By learning more about wildlife and endangered species —and then sharing that knowledge with others—you can create a ripple effect of awareness.

IFAW is all about educating, sharing knowledge, and promoting collective action. Our blog is a great place to start if you want to learn more about conservation and endangered species. Learn more about endangered wildlife in Africa , Europe , Asia , Australia , North America , and South America , or take a look at our list of the world’s most endangered mammals or birds .

Support conservation organizations 

Supporting conservation organizations is a great way to protect endangered species. Donations provide crucial funding for research, habitat protection, wildlife rescue, and species recovery programs.

If you’re not in a position to provide financial support, there are other ways you can support conservation efforts. Identify organizations dedicated to causes you to care about, follow them on social media, and reshare their posts. This helps to amplify their reach and spread awareness. You can also look for volunteering opportunities at conservation organisations and wildlife centres in your local community.

Through these actions, you can support the collective effort to safeguard endangered species. 

Support policy initiatives that help animals

One of the most effective ways to protect endangered species is through policies prioritizing animal welfare and conservation. Many animals are already protected by law, and the more we can introduce legislation to protect threatened species, the better.

You can stay informed about relevant legislation and advocate for stronger protections for endangered species. Or try engaging with your local elected officials by expressing concerns and providing input on wildlife-related policies. You can also join or support organizations lobbying for effective conservation policies. 

Protect wildlife habitats

Individuals play a crucial role in protecting endangered species by safeguarding their habitats. Simple actions can make a significant impact, for example: 

• Letting your lawn grow provides a haven for important pollinating insects and small animals. 
• Planting native trees (and not cutting down existing ones) helps restore natural ecosystems. 
• Setting up water sources in your yard or garden aids local wildlife, especially during dry periods. 
• Planting native flowers supports pollinators, which is essential for the reproductive success of many species. 

You should also refrain from disturbing wildlife in your community. If you see a wild animal that appears orphaned or distressed, contact your local wildlife rehabilitation center for help. 

Participate in park, roadside, or beach cleanups

Participating in park, roadside, or beach cleanups is a direct action that can help you contribute to the protection of endangered species. Have a look to see if there are any community- or council-led cleanups in your area. 

Removing litter and waste preserves natural ecosystems, prevents harm to wildlife, and raises public awareness about the impact of pollution on endangered species and their habitats.

Host a community fundraising event

Organizing events like charity walks, auctions, or educational seminars can raise funds for conservation efforts. These events not only generate financial support but also help spread the word about the importance of biodiversity and conservation. 

Your event’s funds can be given directly to conservation organizations to support their efforts to conserve biodiversity.

Volunteer with an animal shelter or sanctuary that rehabilitates wildlife

Volunteering at a shelter is a hands-on way to directly contribute to protecting endangered species. 

Find an organization near you dedicated to wildlife rescue and rehabilitation and inquire if they’re open to volunteers. By dedicating your time and skills to these organizations, you can help with the care of animals while also learning more about the cause. 

Use alternatives to pesticides

If you have a garden, avoid using pesticides on your plants and vegetables. Opting for natural and eco-friendly pest control methods helps maintain a balanced ecosystem without harming non-target species. Planting native vegetation that attracts natural predators can also reduce the need for chemical interventions.

For more information, you can speak with workers at your local garden center to find a solution that will protect your harvest without harming native wildlife around your home. 

Travel sustainably and support wildlife-friendly tourism

The next time you take a trip, avoid booking a package holiday and instead think a bit more deeply about ways you can travel sustainably to help reduce the negative impact of tourism on ecosystems.

This can include wildlife tourism, like safaris or whale watching, but make sure you look into tour operators that prioritize conservation and animal well-being.

Here are some ideas to make your trips more sustainable:

• Opt for eco-friendly accommodations and tour operators that prioritize conservation practices.
• Choose destinations with responsible wildlife tourism guidelines, ensuring minimal disturbance to natural habitats. 
• Participate in educational programs and eco-tours that raise awareness about endangered species and their conservation needs. 
• Respect local wildlife regulations, keeping a safe distance from animals in their natural habitats. 

Follow vessel speed rules on the ocean

If you’re a boat owner or driver, it’s essential to always follow vessel speed rules. This isn’t just for your safety—it also protects marine life below the surface. 

Strict ocean speed limits help protect whales and dolphins, whose navigation and communication can be disrupted by loud ocean traffic . Faster speeds are also linked to vessel strikes, which can be fatal for animals in the ocean. 

Support habitat connectivity 

Urbanization of natural habitats may be inevitable in some places, but it can cause habitat fragmentation for already vulnerable wildlife populations. For example, fences that mark land boundaries can become obstacles to animals looking to move around their habitats. 

You may not realize that individuals can take action to help prevent fragmentation or even reconnect habitats. For example, you can plant hedges or native trees in your yard instead of building fences. 

Make your home wildlife-friendly

Making your home as wildlife-friendly as possible is especially important if you live in a rural or suburban area. You can do many small things that will have a big impact on local wildlife. For example, you can:

• Keep your cats inside, especially at night.
• Secure garbage in bins with locking lids.
• Stick decals on windows to deter bird collisions.
• Place bird baths outside, and replace the water often to avoid disease transmission.
• Add native plants to your garden, along with plenty of wildflowers for pollinators.

Visit a national park

Next time you have a day or a long weekend off, take the time to visit a national park, wildlife refuge, or protected area. These places provide safe habitats for thousands of endangered species. While you get the chance to experience and enjoy nature, you’re also financially supporting the park, helping them continue their good work. 

Plus, the more people who visit these parks, the more likely governments are to fund them. 

Help IFAW protect endangered species

Protecting endangered species is necessary for the ongoing health of our planet’s ecosystems.

Organizations like IFAW need help from people like you who are committed to helping endangered animals. Embracing sustainable practices, helping us advocate for policy change, and supporting our conservation efforts are ways you can help endangered species worldwide.

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Conservation

In defense of biodiversity: why protecting species from extinction matters.

By Carl Safina • February 12, 2018

A number of biologists have recently made the argument that extinction is part of evolution and that saving species need not be a conservation priority. But this revisionist thinking shows a lack of understanding of evolution and an ignorance of the natural world. 

A few years ago, I helped lead a ship-based expedition along south Alaska during which several scientists and noted artists documented and made art from the voluminous plastic trash that washes ashore even there. At Katmai National Park, we packed off several tons of trash from as distant as South Asia. But what made Katmai most memorable was: huge brown bears. Mothers and cubs were out on the flats digging clams. Others were snoozing on dunes. Others were patrolling.

During a rest, several of us were sitting on an enormous drift-log, watching one mother who’d been clamming with three cubs. As the tide flooded the flat, we watched in disbelief as she brought her cubs up to where we were sitting — and stepped up on the log we were on. There was no aggression, no tension; she was relaxed. We gave her some room as she paused on the log, and then she took her cubs past us into a sedge meadow. Because she was so calm, I felt no fear. I felt the gift.

In this protected refuge, bears could afford a generous view of humans. Whoever protected this land certainly had my gratitude.

In the early 20th century, a botanist named Robert F. Griggs discovered Katmai’s volcanic “Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.” In love with the area, he spearheaded efforts to preserve the region’s wonders and wildlife. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson established Katmai National Monument (now Katmai National Park and Preserve ), protecting 1,700 square miles, thus ensuring a home for bear cubs born a century later, and making possible my indelible experience that day. As a legacy for Griggs’ proclivity to share his love of living things, George Washington University later established the Robert F. Griggs Chair in Biology.

That chair is now occupied by a young professor whose recent writing probably has Griggs spinning in his grave. He is R. Alexander Pyron . A few months ago,  The Washington Post published a “ Perspective” piece by Pyron that is an extreme example of a growing minority opinion in the conservation community, one that might be summarized as, “Humans are profoundly altering the planet, so let’s just make peace with the degradation of the natural world.” 

No biologist is entitled to butcher the scientific fundamentals on which they hang their opinions.

Pyron’s essay – with lines such as, “The only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings” and “[T]he impulse to conserve for conservation’s sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported, unnecessary urgency” – left the impression that it was written in a conservative think tank, perhaps by one of the anti-regulatory zealots now filling posts throughout the Trump administration. Pyron’s sentiments weren’t merely oddly out of keeping with the legacy of the man whose name graces his job title. Much of what Pyron wrote is scientifically inaccurate. And where he stepped out of his field into ethics, what he wrote was conceptually confused.

Pyron has since posted, on his website and Facebook page, 1,100 words of frantic backpedaling that land somewhere between apology and retraction, including mea culpas that he “sensationalized” parts of his own argument and “cavalierly glossed over several complex issues.” But Pyron’s original essay and his muddled apology do not change the fact that the beliefs he expressed reflect a disturbing trend that has taken hold among segments of the conservation community. And his article comes at a time when conservation is being assailed from other quarters, with a half-century of federal protections of land being rolled back, the Endangered Species Act now more endangered than ever, and the relationship between extinction and evolution being subjected to confused, book-length mistreatment.

Pyron’s original opinion piece, so clear and unequivocal in its assertions, is a good place to unpack and disentangle accelerating misconceptions about the “desirability” of extinction that are starting to pop up like hallucinogenic mushrooms.

In recent years, some biologists and writers have been distancing themselves from conservation’s bedrock idea that in an increasingly human-dominated world we must find ways to protect and perpetuate natural beauty, wild places, and the living endowment of the planet. In their stead, we are offered visions of human-dominated landscapes in which the stresses of destruction and fragmentation spur evolution. 

White rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum ). Source: Herman Pijpers/ Flickr

Conservation International ditched its exuberant tropical forest graphic for  a new corporate logo  whose circle and line were designed to suggest a human head and outstretched arms. A few years ago, Peter Kareiva, then chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy,  said , “conservationists will have to jettison their idealized notions of nature, parks, and wilderness,” for  “a more optimistic, human-friendly vision.” Human annihilation of the passenger pigeon, he wrote, caused “no catastrophic or even measurable effects,” characterizing the total extinction of the hemisphere’s most abundant bird — whose population went from billions to zero inside a century (certainly a “measurable effect” in itself) — as an example of nature’s “resilience.”

British ecologist Chris Thomas’s recent book, Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction, argues that the destruction of nature creates opportunities for evolution of new lifeforms that counterbalance any losses we create, an idea that is certainly optimistic considering the burgeoning lists of endangered species. Are we really ready to consider that disappearing rhinos are somehow counterbalanced by a new subspecies of daisy in a railroad track? Maybe it would be simpler if Thomas and his comrades just said, “We don’t care about nature.’’

Enter Pyron, who — at least in his initial essay — basically said he doesn’t. He’s entitled to his apathy, but no biologist is entitled to butcher the scientific fundamentals on which they hang their opinions.

Pyron began with a resonant story about his nocturnal rediscovery of a South American frog that had been thought recently extinct. He and colleagues collected several that, he reassured us, “are now breeding safely in captivity.” As we breathed a sigh of relief, Pyron added, “But they will go extinct one day, and the world will be none the poorer for it.” 

The conviction that today’s slides toward mass extinction are not inevitable spurred the founding of the conservation movement.

I happen to be writing this in the Peruvian Amazon, having just returned from a night walk to a light-trap where I helped a biologist collect moths. No one yet knows how many species live here. Moths are important pollinators. Knowing them helps detangle a little bit of how this rainforest works. So it’s a good night to mention that the number of species in an area carries the technical term “species richness.” More is richer, and fewer is, indeed, poorer. Pyron’s view lies outside scientific consensus and societal values. 

Pyron wasn’t concerned about his frogs going extinct, because, “Eventually, they will be replaced by a dozen or a hundred new species that evolve later.” But the timescale would be millennia at best — meaningless in human terms — and perhaps never; hundreds of amphibians worldwide are suffering declines and extinctions, raising the possibility that major lineages and whole groups of species will vanish. Pyron seemed to have no concerns about that possibility, writing, “Mass extinctions periodically wipe out up to 95 percent of all species in one fell swoop; these come every 50 million to 100 million years.”

But that’s misleading. “Periodically” implies regularity. There’s no regularity to mass extinctions. Not in their timing, nor in their causes. The mass extinctions are not related. Three causes of mass extinctions — prolonged worldwide atmosphere-altering volcanic eruptions; a dinosaur-snuffing asteroid hit; and the spreading agriculture, settlement, and sheer human appetite driving extinctions today — are unrelated.

Rio Pescado stubfoot toad ( Atelopus balios ). Source: De Investigación y Conservación de Anfibios/ Flickr

The conviction that today’s slides toward mass extinction are not inevitable, and could be lessened or avoided, spurred the founding of the conservation movement and created the discipline of conservation biology.

But Pyron seems unmoved. “Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection prunes the poorly adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish,” he declared. “Species constantly go extinct, and every species that is alive today will one day follow suit. There is no such thing as an ‘endangered species,’ except for all species.”

Let us unpack. Extinction is not evolution’s driver; survival is. The engine of evolution is survival amidst competition. It’s a little like what drives innovation in business. To see this, let’s simply compare the species diversity of the Northern Hemisphere, where periodic ice sheets largely wiped the slate clean, with those of the tropics, where the evolutionary time clock continued running throughout. A couple of acres in eastern temperate North America might have a dozen tree species or fewer. In the Amazon a similar area can have 300 tree species. All of North American has 1,400 species of trees; Brazil has 8,800. All of North America has just over 900 birds; Colombia has 1,900 species. All of North America has 722 butterfly species. Where I am right now, along the Tambopata River in Peru, biologists have tallied around 1,200 butterfly species.

Competition among living species drives proliferation into diversified specialties. Specialists increasingly exploit narrowing niches. We can think of this as a marketplace of life, where little competition necessitates little specialization, thus little proliferation. An area with many types of trees, for instance, directly causes the evolution of many types of highly specialized pollinating insects, hummingbirds, and pollinating bats, who visit only the “right” trees. Many flowering plants are pollinated by just one specialized species.

Pyron muddles several kinds of extinctions, then serves up further misunderstanding of how evolution works. So let’s clarify. Mass extinctions are global; they involve the whole planet. There have been five mass extinctions and we’ve created a sixth . Past mass extinctions happened when the entire planet became more hostile. Regional wipeouts, as occurred during the ice ages, are not considered mass extinctions, even though many species can go extinct. Even without these major upheavals there are always a few species blinking out due to environmental changes or new competitors. And there are pseudo-extinctions where old forms no longer exist, but only because their descendants have changed through time. 

New species do not suddenly “arise,” nor are they really new. They evolve from existing species, as population gene pools change.

Crucially for understanding the relationship between extinction and evolution is this: New species do not suddenly “arise,” nor are they really new. New species evolve from existing species, as population gene pools change. Many “extinct” species never really died out; they just changed into what lives now. Not all the dinosaurs went extinct; theropod dinosaurs survived. They no longer exist because they evolved into what we call birds. Australopithecines no longer exist, but they did not all go extinct. Their children morphed into the genus Homo, and the tool- and fire-making Homo erectus may well have survived to become us. If they indeed are our direct ancestor — as some species was — they are gone now, but no more “extinct” than our own childhood. All species come from ancestors, in lineages that have survived.

Pyron’s contention that the “hardiest” flourish is a common misconception. A sloth needs to be slow; a faster sloth is going to wind up as dinner in a harpy eagle nest. A white bear is not “hardier” than a brown one; the same white fur that provides camouflage in a snowy place will scare away prey in green meadow. Bears with genes for white fur flourished in the Arctic, while brown bears did well amidst tundra and forests. Polar bears evolved from brown bears of the tundra; they got so specialized that they separated, then specialized further. Becoming a species is a process, not an event. “New” species are simply specialized descendants of old species.

True extinctions beget nothing. Humans have recently sped the extinction rate by about a thousand times compared to the fossil record. The fact that the extinction of dinosaurs was followed, over tens of millions of years, by a proliferation of mammals, is irrelevant to present-day decisions about rhinos, elephant populations, or monarch butterflies. Pyron’s statement, “There is no such thing as an ‘endangered species,’ except for all species,” is like saying there are no endangered children except for all children. It’s like answering “Black lives matter” with “All lives matter.” It’s a way of intentionally missing the point. 

Chestnut-sided warbler ( Setophaga pensylvanica ). Source: Francesco Veronesi/ Wikimedia

Here’s the point: All life today represents non-extinctions; each species, every living individual, is part of a lineage that has not gone extinct in a billion years.

Pyron also expressed the opinion that “the only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves …” I don’t know of another biologist who shares this opinion. Pyron’s statement makes little practical sense, because reducing the diversity and abundance of the living world will rob human generations of choices, as values change. Save the passenger pigeon? Too late for that. Whales? A few people acted in time to keep most of them. Elephants? Our descendants will either revile or revere us for what we do while we have the planet’s reins in our hands for a few minutes. We are each newly arrived and temporary tourists on this planet, yet we find ourselves custodians of the world for all people yet unborn. A little humility, and forbearance, might comport.

Thus Pyron’s most jarring assertion: “Extinction does not carry moral significance, even when we have caused it.” That statement is a stranger to thousands of years of philosophy on moral agency and reveals an ignorance of human moral thinking. Moral agency issues from an ability to consider consequences. Humans are the species most capable of such consideration. Thus many philosophers consider humans the only creatures capable of acting as moral agents. An asteroid strike, despite its consequences, has no moral significance. Protecting bears by declaring Katmai National Monument, or un-protecting Bears Ears National Monument, are acts of moral agency. Ending genetic lineages millions of years old, either actively or by the willful neglect that Pyron advocates, certainly qualifies as morally significant.

Do we really wish a world with only what we “rely on for food and shelter?” Do animals have no value if we don’t eat them?

How can we even decide which species we “directly depend’’ upon? We don’t directly depend on peacocks or housecats, leopards or leopard frogs, humpback whales or hummingbirds or chestnut-sided warblers or millions of others. Do we really wish a world with only what we “rely on for food and shelter,” as Pyron seemed to advocate? Do animals have no value if we don’t eat them? I happen not to view my dogs as food, for instance. Things we “rely on” make life possible, sure, but the things we don’t need make life worthwhile.

When Pyron wrote, “Conservation is needed for ourselves and only ourselves… If this means fewer dazzling species, fewer unspoiled forests, less untamed wilderness, so be it,” he expressed a dereliction of the love, fascination, and perspective that motivates the practice of biology.

Here is a real biologist, Alfred Russell Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection:

I thought of the long ages of the past during which the successive generations of these things of beauty had run their course … with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness, to all appearances such a wanton waste of beauty… . This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man… . Their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone. —The Malay Archipelago, 1869

At the opposite pole of Wallace’s human insight and wonder, Pyron asked us to become complicit in extinction. “The goals of species conservation have to be aligned with the acceptance that large numbers of animals will go extinct,” he asserted. “Thirty to 40 percent of species may be  threatened  with extinction in the near future, and their loss may be inevitable. But both the planet and humanity can probably survive or even thrive in a world with fewer species … The species that we rely on for food and shelter are a tiny proportion of total biodiversity, and most humans live in — and rely on — areas of only moderate biodiversity, not the Amazon or the Congo Basin.”

African elephant ( Loxodonta africana ). Source: Flowcomm/ Flickr

Right now, in the Amazon as I type, listening to nocturnal birds and bugs and frogs in this towering emerald cathedral of life, thinking such as Pyron’s strikes me as failing to grasp both the living world and the human spirit. 

The massive destruction that Pyron seems to so cavalierly accept isn’t necessary. When I was a kid, there were no ospreys, no bald eagles, no peregrine falcons left around New York City and Long Island where I lived. DDT and other hard pesticides were erasing them from the world. A small handful of passionate people sued to get those pesticides banned, others began breeding captive falcons for later release, and one biologist brought osprey eggs to nests of toxically infertile parents to keep faltering populations on life support. These projects succeeded. All three of these species have recovered spectacularly and now again nest near my Long Island home. Extinction wasn’t a cost of progress; it was an unnecessary cost of carelessness. Humans could work around the needs of these birds, and these creatures could exist around development. But it took some thinking, some hard work, and some tinkering.

It’s not that anyone thinks humans have not greatly changed the world, or will stop changing it. Rather, as the great wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote in his 1949 classic A Sand County Almanac , “To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

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Preventing Extinction: Strategies for Protecting Endangered Species

Biodiversity is at a higher risk of extinction than ever before, and there is an urgent need to prevent global extinction. Endangered species are endangered by deforestation, climate change, and human intrusion. There is a need for comprehensive policies that will protect these vulnerable animals and stabilize our ecosystem immediately. By thinking outside the box, we can improve our conservation efforts to address the many risks that life on Earth faces. Let’s discuss strategies that ensure that extinction does not occur.

Climate Change

Everything ranging from climate to the life of different species is affected by global warming. In this respect, endangered species have an extra challenge for survival. Let’s think about how the changing weather hinders attempts to protect and even save them in some instances.

Habitat Disruption

One thing that climate change does is disrupts natural habitats. The living places of endangered species can be greatly altered by increasing temperatures and changing climatic conditions. Consequently, they may lose their homes, which makes it difficult for them to find food, mate, or complete their daily routine. As a result, preserving endangered species becomes much more challenging when they are inhabiting shifting landscapes.

Mismatched Timing

Climate change may alter the timing of certain events critical to species’ survival. For instance, temperature changes and seasonal shifts can affect flowering time for plants or migration periods for some animals. Non-alignment of these shifts with specific requirements of endangered species messes up their cycle of life. This incongruity makes it harder for individuals of such species to hunt and reproduce as well as nurse young ones, which further stresses already strained populations.

Limited Resources

Climate change has far-reaching effects beyond temperature and precipitation; it also affects resource availability. Changing rainfall patterns, water sources, and availability of food can make it hard for any endangered animal to find what they need in order to survive. However, this becomes much more complicated when underpinning climatic factors cease to be uniform or predictable like before, thus making conservation efforts intricate for these creatures that rely on them.

Effective Strategies for Preventing Extinction

To preserve the balance of our planet’s ecosystems, it is crucial that we prevent extinction. When species disappear, this interrupts the natural arrangement and changes everything from food chains to climate control. What is urgent is biodiversity conservation in order to ensure the survival of different species and ultimately ensure a sustainable future for our planet.

Science, Policy, and Public Engagement

Efficient strategies for preventing extinction are multifaceted as they encompass science, policy, and public engagement. Scientists have a central role in studying endangered species and their habitats and developing ways of conserving them. At the same time, strong policies are required to enforce protective measures and regulate human activities that contribute to endangerment. Engaging the public helps create awareness among the people concerning these issues, thus making them a community concern.

Preserving Habitat

Preventing extinction starts with preserving natural habitats. Many species face severe threats due to habitat destruction and fragmentation. It is important that any efforts geared at conserving these environments prioritize their protection as well as restoration to guarantee that the threatened species can get enough space, resources, and conditions needed for survival. Safeguarding space will become a savior to numerous plants on Earth as well as animals that face imminent risk of extinction.

Collaboration on a Global Scale

Extinction shall be prevented by global collaboration. Many of these endangered animals cross borders, necessitating international cooperation in their preservation. Knowledge sharing on a global scale enhances the impact of conservation initiatives through pooling together resources and expertise from various parts of the world; for global collaboration, actions such as collaborations, agreements, and partnerships are established since all countries should be against extinction, showing how responsibility is shared among nations and communities globally.

Innovative Conservation Technologies

Innovative conservation technologies offer a glimmer of hope in the face of saving the earth’s biodiversity. These front-line solutions channel scientific and technological advancements to address issues that are faced by animals under threat of extinction. Let’s go on and see how these innovations shape the future of conservation.

Drones Revolutionizing Wildlife Monitoring

Drones, which were initially used for aerial photography and delivery purposes, are now changing wildlife monitoring. These unmanned aircraft provide a view from above in remote habitats, making it easier for scientists to follow elusive species. From counting populations to tracking habitats, drones provide a non-invasive and efficient way to acquire important data for conservation purposes.

Preserving Biodiversity through Genetic Conservation

Gene tools are essential to conservationists for biodiversity preservation. These advanced genetic techniques help to safeguard the gene pool of endangered species. By understanding and maintaining unique genetic differences among populations, we can improve the survival chances of threatened species under ever-changing ecological conditions.

Remote Sensing

Satellite remote sensing allows scientists to monitor areas such as inaccessibility or endangered status. This technology helps assess changes in the environment, deforestation, and habitat loss, thereby providing critical information needed for effective planning and timely intervention aimed at protecting vulnerable ecosystems.

Empowering Individuals in Conservation Efforts

Also, innovation has led to citizen science initiatives that enable people to take part in environmental conservation. People can increasingly report observations about rare species and environmental change through mobile apps or websites. Apart from improving data collection, it also creates shared responsibility among people concerning maintaining diverse ecosystems within our planet.

Automated Bioacoustic Monitoring Devices

Nature’s detectives refer to automated bioacoustic monitoring devices that listen to the sounds made by wild animals so as to understand their behaviors. These devices have been improved technologically such that they can detect and analyze animal noises, thereby giving important information on species distribution, abundance, and even welfare. They use these gadgets to “listen” to nature, hence conserving biodiversity.

The Role of Camera Traps

Camera traps are like silent guardians in the wild that capture fleeting glimpses of wildlife without disrupting their natural habitats. Pictures or videos are taken whenever an animal crosses this device with motion detectors. The figures enable scientists to see into the secret lives of animals, thus helping them study behavior and population dynamics or even detect rare or endangered species in human-uninhabited areas.

Challenges and Future Prospects

Nevertheless, there are challenges like accessibility, affordability, and ethical concerns that must be solved if these technologies will ever reach their full potential. Overcoming such challenges while ensuring widespread access with responsible use marks the future of innovative conservation technologies. Constantly improving technology and being ethical in practice is key to enhancing the effects of these innovations on the ongoing fight to save our planet’s rich biodiversity.

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10 Ways to Save Animals Facing Extinction

By: Author Our Endangered World

Posted on Last updated: September 26, 2023

All animals exist in a complex web interconnected to support each other. That’s why our global focus today should be to save animals facing extinction. By doing so, we are certainly maintaining an ecological balance.  

Since the ice age, mass species extinction has been accelerating at a depressing pace. The recent 6 th extinction has cost the world a good number of beloved species due to human activities.

Human activities such as poaching, overhunting, pollution, farming, mining, urbanization, overfishing , wildlife trafficking, and deforestation are significant threats to animal species .

In addition, these human actions have led to severe global warming, carbon emissions, and climatic changes that have led to habitat loss , putting animals in danger of extinction. Thus, it’s vital to take the necessary steps to save and restore the disappearing animals.

Governments and several prominent organizations, such as NRDC, World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and One Tree Planted, are taking action to protect endangered wildlife and their habitats.

They apply the best science and work with local communities to find solutions to this menace. But what actions can you and I take to save animals facing extinction?

This piece will explore what we can do to protect animals facing extinction. First, let’s look at the list of animals that are going extinct.

How can you help to save and restore these endangered species ? Let’s explore ten different ways. 

Table of Contents

How to Save Animals Facing Extinction

There are small but significant actions that you can take to save animals facing extinction. They include:

Support Companies that Promote Sustainability

When shopping either from your local or online stores, go for those companies with eco-friendly items. Whether looking for shoes, outfits, toys, bags, or utensils, you can opt for sustainable products to participate in environmental preservation. These items help reduce the clearing of forests or animal habitats, thus saving endangered animals.

Furthermore, you can support minimalism by accepting minimal packaging or the use of recyclable, reusable, and biodegradable materials to reduce waste and plastics that ruin the environment. Also, go for vegan items and use items that don’t support animal cruelty.

Avoid Harmful Black Market Products

Don’t purchase items made of horns, ivory, wood, and other things that endanger animals. This saves the animals and their habitat . Also, shun buying items from companies that make items from such products.

Even when traveling, be conscious when buying souvenirs. Some could have been made from endangered animal products like ivory.

It’s vital to research the product before you can make the decision to buy.

Avoid Harmful Pesticides & Herbicides that Damage Native Plants & Wildlife

Harmful herbicides and pesticides have resulted in significant animal loss.  While they might be good for killing weeds, unfortunately, they also leave a lasting destructive effect on native species.

The chemicals penetrate the soil and last a long time, thus endangering native wildlife species . Worse, they spread throughout the food chain, causing damage to small mammals and eventually impacting the big predators that prey on them.

Avoiding or limiting the use of these chemicals can help save the endangered animals in your area.

Drive Carefully

This is one of the easiest and most practical things you and your family can do to participate in environmental and animal conservation efforts. When driving near forests or animal conservation , don’t over speed. This will help reduce the road hazard to endangered wildlife.

We cannot deny that some roads and highways pass through forests, and most were constructed with minimal attention to how they can negatively impact the local animal population. Also, there are minimal built-in measures to enable animals to traverse the road that cut right through their habitat safely.

You can take the initiative to drive carefully when traversing these roads. Reducing car speed can ensure there are minimal accidents involving animals.

See Related : Best Eco-Friendly Space Heaters

Volunteer Your Time to Protect Wildlife in Your Area.

Animal parks, wildlife refuges, and other conservations are often home to endangered species. Find a national or local center in need of volunteers and offer to help. You can make an impact by providing your time to care for and protect these animals and help them thrive.

Learn about the struggles these endangered animals face and how you can help end them. Your little action will make a huge difference.

See related: Philippine Eagle: Species Overview, Conservation, and Threats

Help Replenish the Local Ecosystem by Planting Native Flora

Native wildlife in your region thrives on native plants. But, industries and other human activities often destroy these plants that provide food and shelter to local wildlife.

Planting native plants and replenishing those that are disappearing will be helping the endangered animals in your area that need them to survive.

In addition, since non-native species tend to invade and overrun the local population of plants and animals, leading to their extinction, you can help offset the damage left by these invasive and non-native species.

Planting native plants also attract pollinators such as bees and other insects that are crucial for a healthy ecosystem. This will go a long way in helping save animals facing extinction.

 Reduce Pollution

Pollution is a significant threat to animal species. Littering plastics threaten wildlife and marine species. To reduce this kind of pollution , make sure you dispose of your waste in the right place and avoid dumping chemicals down the drain.

Also, carbon emissions from industries and vehicles have detrimental effects on animals and even humans. Some of the minor actions you can take to reduce air pollution include;

• Opt for walking, biking, or public transport when you can, instead of driving a personal vehicle
• Consider carpooling when it’s applicable.
• Invest in an electric car to reduce carbon footprints
• Buy locally-grown food

Keeping the environment and water free from industrial and plastic waste is valuable to all species. And taking minor actions like those indicated above can help protect and save the environment and the species.

Donate to a Wildlife Organization

Several organizations are supporting wildlife protection and the conservation of animal habitats. Find out more about their efforts and donate to what they have established to further the cause.

There are some zoos not well-established and accredited. So, before you donate, ensure that the zoos and aquariums are accredited and are instrumental in rescuing and rehabilitating endangered animal species. Also, you can offer them support through their websites or social media accounts.

Just find out the actions they are doing and donate your time and resources.

Ensure Your Home is not a Hazard to Wildlife.

You can make sure that there is no hazard posed to wildlife at your home. For example, secure all your trash cans so that animals can’t access them. Also, lock their lids to keep trash from becoming a hazard.

Reduce your water consumption by ensuring there is no wastage of water. Some of the things you can do to reduce water wastage include:

• Install water-saving flow restrictors or showerheads
• Check and fix any water leakages
• Turn off the faucets when brushing or shaving and then tighten them well once done.

These little actions can help ensure there is more local water for wildlife. Another essential practice is placing window decals. This helps protect the birds from colliding with your windows.

See Related : Animals That With the Letter X

Spread the Word

The last but not least step you can take to save and protect endangered animals is to become a messenger. Be a voice and advocate for the protection of these species.

Spread the word to friends, family, and even strangers and let them know the actions to take and how they help. You can use word of mouth, social media, or create a website to reach as many people as possible.  Also, share this article with your networks. You will be taking one step to help save animals facing extinction.

List of Animals Facing Extinction

According to the IUCN list of threatened species, 16,306 species are facing extinction as of 2021. This number is an increase from last year’s figure, which was 16,118. If humans don’t act now, the future is a blink for these species.

Some of the animals facing extinction include:

• Polar bear – This animal lives in Arctic conditions. But the animals facing extinction due to climate change in the Arctic is leading polar bears closer to disappearance. The polar bear is one of the animals facing extinction due to habitat destruction and human conflict.
• Gharial – This is a crocodile in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, barely surviving. The main threats pushing gharial to the brink of extinction are farming , aquaculture & agriculture, pollution, and mining, among other general disturbances based on IUCN reports.
• Saola – According to IUCN, the biggest threat to this critically endangered animal is hunting with dogs. To save this species, we need to intensify the removal of poachers’ snares and reduce hunting with dogs in the central locations of the Annamite forests to curb this threat.
• Kakapo – This is another critically endangered animal species. The kakapo parrot is a unique species threatened by invasive species, diseases, and genes.
• Amur Leopard – Amur Leopard is also facing extinction due to human conflict and habitat loss. This habitat loss is being driven mainly by the conversion of land for agriculture and farming.
• Vaquita – Vaquita porpoise is an endangered ocean mammal in Mexico. It’s sadly vanishing, and their number is declining quickly due to illegal fishing gear used to catch Totoaba, another critically endangered species .
• Black Rhino and Northern White Rhino- These rhinos are threatened mainly due to poaching for their horns. Their habitats are also being ruined due to human settlement, farming, and logging activities.
• Cross River Gorilla – Once believed to be extinct, according to IUCN, is this great ape called cross river gorilla. However, a few remain, but their greatest threat is habitat loss, hunting, agriculture, and exposure to diseases from humans and livestock.
• Hawksbill Sea Turtle – This sea turtle is endangered due to fishing as it often falls victim to fishing gear like gill nets. This causes injuries that eventually lead to debilitation or death due to the swallowing of hooks and flipper entanglements. Another threat is the fertilizer that washes into the ocean threatening their survival.
• Vancouver Island Marmot – The main threat to this species is logging, according to IUCN. While it faces predation by species like golden eagles and wolves , island marmot is severely threatened by human activities, habitat loss, and degradation.
• Sumatran Elephant – This elephant is on the brink of extinction due to the severe threat of agriculture. Humans have converted forest areas in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, into settlements and farmlands for palm oil plantations. This increases the risk of human conflict, poaching, and even poisoning of the Sumatran elephant.
• Sunda Tiger – Sunda tiger, also a resident of the Sumatran rainforest, is also under threat due to farming and consequently poaching.
• Giant Panda – The giant panda is another vulnerable species. Hunting and trapping of other species are its main threats, according to IUCN.

What happens when these animals go into extinction? Let’s look at the effects of extinction, and how we can save animals facing extinction.

Effects of Extinction

The extinction and reduction of some animal species disrupt the earth’s ecosystem. The effects are being felt both on land and in the ocean. Here are typical examples:

• When the Arctic heated up due to global warming, the polar bear’s human conflict increased since its habitat had been compromised. Bears ended up invading residential areas putting humans in danger.
• Another classic example is when foxes go extinct or reduce in number, mouse overpopulation is inevitable due to decreased predation. This consequentially increases the issue of diseases like the bubonic plague or E. coli to other species, which is certainly not good for the environment.
• When cougars in the western US state of Utah were reduced, there was an explosion of the deer population. This bunch of deer consumed a large part of vegetation, altering the local stream’s path and lowering the overall diversity.
• When lions and leopards decreased in Africa, it led to a surge of olive baboons, which sadly transferred intestinal parasites to humans.
• Industrial whaling led to a change of diet of the killer whale diet. As a result, they are now eating additional seals, sea lions, and otters , dramatically reducing in population.
• According to recent studies , the reduction and loss of predators, especially the large ones, have led to population collapse, pandemics, and ecosystem shifts in the recent past.

 Related Resources

• Northern Rockhopper Penguin
• Greater Bamboo Lemur
• Leatherback Sea Turtle
• Mexican Spotted Owl
• List of Endangered Deer Species
• Overview of Plastic Pollution
• Important Pros and Cons of Biofuels

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November 1, 2023

20 min read

Can We Save Every Species from Extinction?

The Endangered Species Act requires that every U.S. plant and animal be saved from extinction, but after 50 years, we have to do much more to prevent a biodiversity crisis

By Robert Kunzig

Snail Darter Percina tanasi. Listed as Endangered: 1975. Status: Delisted in 2022.

© Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

A Bald Eagle disappeared into the trees on the far bank of the Tennessee River just as the two researchers at the bow of our modest motorboat began hauling in the trawl net. Eagles have rebounded so well that it's unusual not to see one here these days, Warren Stiles of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told me as the net got closer. On an almost cloudless spring morning in the 50th year of the Endangered Species Act, only a third of a mile downstream from the Tennessee Valley Authority's big Nickajack Dam, we were searching for one of the ESA's more notorious beneficiaries: the Snail Darter. A few months earlier Stiles and the FWS had decided that, like the Bald Eagle, the little fish no longer belonged on the ESA's endangered species list. We were hoping to catch the first nonendangered specimen.

Dave Matthews, a TVA biologist, helped Stiles empty the trawl. Bits of wood and rock spilled onto the deck, along with a Common Logperch maybe six inches long. So did an even smaller fish; a hair over two inches, it had alternating vertical bands of dark and light brown, each flecked with the other color, a pattern that would have made it hard to see against the gravelly river bottom. It was a Snail Darter in its second year, Matthews said, not yet full-grown.

Everybody loves a Bald Eagle. There is much less consensus about the Snail Darter. Yet it epitomizes the main controversy still swirling around the ESA, signed into law on December 28, 1973, by President Richard Nixon: Can we save all the obscure species of this world, and should we even try, if they get in the way of human imperatives? The TVA didn't think so in the 1970s, when the plight of the Snail Darter—an early entry on the endangered species list—temporarily stopped the agency from completing a huge dam. When the U.S. attorney general argued the TVA's case before the Supreme Court with the aim of sidestepping the law, he waved a jar that held a dead, preserved Snail Darter in front of the nine judges in black robes, seeking to convey its insignificance.

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Now I was looking at a living specimen. It darted around the bottom of a white bucket, bonking its nose against the side and delicately fluttering the translucent fins that swept back toward its tail.

“It's kind of cute,” I said.

Matthews laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “I like this guy!” he said. “Most people are like, ‘Really? That's it?’ ” He took a picture of the fish and clipped a sliver off its tail fin for DNA analysis but left it otherwise unharmed. Then he had me pour it back into the river. The next trawl, a few miles downstream, brought up seven more specimens.

In the late 1970s the Snail Darter seemed confined to a single stretch of a single tributary of the Tennessee River, the Little Tennessee, and to be doomed by the TVA's ill-considered Tellico Dam, which was being built on the tributary. The first step on its twisting path to recovery came in 1978, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, surprisingly, that the ESA gave the darter priority even over an almost finished dam. “It was when the government stood up and said, ‘Every species matters, and we meant it when we said we're going to protect every species under the Endangered Species Act,’” says Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Bald Eagle Haliaeetus leucocephalus. Listed as Endangered: 1967. Status: Delisted in 2007. Credit: © Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

Today the Snail Darter can be found along 400 miles of the river's main stem and multiple tributaries. ESA enforcement has saved dozens of other species from extinction. Bald Eagles, American Alligators and Peregrine Falcons are just a few of the roughly 60 species that had recovered enough to be “delisted” by late 2023.

And yet the U.S., like the planet as a whole, faces a growing biodiversity crisis. Less than 6 percent of the animals and plants ever placed on the list have been delisted; many of the rest have made scant progress toward recovery. What's more, the list is far from complete: roughly a third of all vertebrates and vascular plants in the U.S. are vulnerable to extinction, says Bruce Stein, chief scientist at the National Wildlife Federation. Populations are falling even for species that aren't yet in danger. “There are a third fewer birds flying around now than in the 1970s,” Stein says. We're much less likely to see a White-throated Sparrow or a Red-winged Blackbird, for example, even though neither species is yet endangered.

The U.S. is far emptier of wildlife sights and sounds than it was 50 years ago, primarily because habitat—forests, grasslands, rivers—has been relentlessly appropriated for human purposes. The ESA was never designed to stop that trend, any more than it is equipped to deal with the next massive threat to wildlife: climate change. Nevertheless, its many proponents say, it is a powerful, foresightful law that we could implement more wisely and effectively, perhaps especially to foster stewardship among private landowners. And modest new measures, such as the Recovering America's Wildlife Act—a bill with bipartisan support—could further protect flora and fauna.

That is, if special interests don't flout the law. After the 1978 Supreme Court decision, Congress passed a special exemption to the ESA allowing the TVA to complete the Tellico Dam. The Snail Darter managed to survive because the TVA transplanted some of the fish from the Little Tennessee, because remnant populations turned up elsewhere in the Tennessee Valley, and because local rivers and streams slowly became less polluted following the 1972 Clean Water Act, which helped fish rebound.

Under pressure from people enforcing the ESA, the TVA also changed the way it managed its dams throughout the valley. It started aerating the depths of its reservoirs, in some places by injecting oxygen. It began releasing water from the dams more regularly to maintain a minimum flow that sweeps silt off the river bottom, exposing the clean gravel that Snail Darters need to lay their eggs and feed on snails. The river system “is acting more like a real river,” Matthews says. Basically, the TVA started considering the needs of wildlife, which is really what the ESA requires. “The Endangered Species Act works,” Matthews says. “With just a little bit of help, [wildlife] can recover.”

The trouble is that many animals and plants aren't getting that help—because government resources are too limited, because private landowners are alienated by the ESA instead of engaged with it, and because as a nation the U.S. has never fully committed to the ESA's essence. Instead, for half a century, the law has been one more thing that polarizes people's thinking.

I t may seem impossible today to imagine the political consensus that prevailed on environmental matters in 1973. The U.S. Senate approved the ESA unanimously, and the House passed it by a vote of 390 to 12. “Some people have referred to it as almost a statement of religion coming out of the Congress,” says Gary Frazer, who as assistant director for ecological services at the FWS has been overseeing the act's implementation for nearly 25 years.

Gopher Tortoise Gopherus polyphemus . Listed as Threatened: 1987. Status: Still threatened. Credit: ©Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

But loss of faith began five years later with the Snail Darter case. Congresspeople who had been thinking of eagles, bears and Whooping Cranes when they passed the ESA, and had not fully appreciated the reach of the sweeping language they had approved, were disabused by the Supreme Court. It found that the legislation had created, “wisely or not ... an absolute duty to preserve all endangered species,” Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said after the Snail Darter case concluded. Even a recently discovered tiny fish had to be saved, “whatever the cost,” he wrote in the decision.

Was that wise? For both environmentalists such as Curry and many nonenvironmentalists, the answer has always been absolutely. The ESA “is the basic Bill of Rights for species other than ourselves,” says National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, who is building a “photo ark” of every animal visible to the naked eye as a record against extinction. (He has taken studio portraits of 15,000 species so far.) But to critics, the Snail Darter decision always defied common sense. They thought it was “crazy,” says Michael Bean, a leading ESA expert, now retired from the Environmental Defense Fund. “That dichotomy of view has remained with us for the past 45 years.”

According to veteran Washington, D.C., environmental attorney Lowell E. Baier, author of a new history called The Codex of the Endangered Species Act, both the act itself and its early implementation reflected a top-down, federal “command-and-control mentality” that still breeds resentment. FWS field agents in the early days often saw themselves as combat biologists enforcing the act's prohibitions. After the Northern Spotted Owl's listing got tangled up in a bitter 1990s conflict over logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, the FWS became more flexible in working out arrangements. “But the dark mythology of the first 20 years continues in the minds of much of America,” Baier says.

Credit: June Minju Kim ( map ); Source: David Matthews, Tennessee Valley Authority ( reference )

The law can impose real burdens on landowners. Before doing anything that might “harass” or “harm” an endangered species, including modifying its habitat, they need to get a permit from the FWS and present a “habitat conservation plan.” Prosecutions aren't common, because evidence can be elusive, but what Bean calls “the cloud of uncertainty” surrounding what landowners can and cannot do can be distressing.

Requirements the ESA places on federal agencies such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management—or on the TVA—can have large economic impacts. Section 7 of the act prohibits agencies from taking, permitting or funding any action that is likely to “jeopardize the continued existence” of a listed species. If jeopardy seems possible, the agency must consult with the FWS first (or the National Marine Fisheries Service for marine species) and seek alternative plans.

“When people talk about how the ESA stops projects, they've been talking about section 7,” says conservation biologist Jacob Malcom. The Northern Spotted Owl is a strong example: an economic analysis suggests the logging restrictions eliminated thousands of timber-industry jobs, fueling conservative arguments that the ESA harms humans and economic growth.

In recent decades, however, that view has been based “on anecdote, not evidence,” Malcom claims. At Defenders of Wildlife, where he worked until 2022 (he's now at the U.S. Department of the Interior), he and his colleagues analyzed 88,290 consultations between the FWS and other agencies from 2008 to 2015. “Zero projects were stopped,” Malcom says. His group also found that federal agencies were only rarely taking the active measures to recover a species that section 7 requires—like what the TVA did for the Snail Darter. For many listed species, the FWS does not even have recovery plans.

Endangered species also might not recover because “most species are not receiving protection until they have reached dangerously low population sizes,” according to a 2022 study by Erich K. Eberhard of Columbia University and his colleagues. Most listings occur only after the FWS has been petitioned or sued by an environmental group—often the Center for Biological Diversity, which claims credit for 742 listings. Years may go by between petition and listing, during which time the species' population dwindles. Noah Greenwald, the center's endangered species director, thinks the FWS avoids listings to avoid controversy—that it has internalized opposition to the ESA.

He and other experts also say that work regarding endangered species is drastically underfunded. As more species are listed, the funding per species declines. “Congress hasn't come to grips with the biodiversity crisis,” says Baier, who lobbies lawmakers regularly. “When you talk to them about biodiversity, their eyes glaze over.” Just this year federal lawmakers enacted a special provision exempting the Mountain Valley Pipeline from the ESA and other challenges, much as Congress had exempted the Tellico Dam. Environmentalists say the gas pipeline, running from West Virginia to Virginia, threatens the Candy Darter, a colorful small fish. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided a rare bit of good news: it granted the FWS $62.5 million to hire more biologists to prepare recovery plans.

The ESA is often likened to an emergency room for species: overcrowded and understaffed, it has somehow managed to keep patients alive, but it doesn't do much more. The law contains no mandate to restore ecosystems to health even though it recognizes such work as essential for thriving wildlife. “Its goal is to make things better, but its tools are designed to keep things from getting worse,” Bean says. Its ability to do even that will be severely tested in coming decades by threats it was never designed to confront.

T he ESA requires a species to be listed as “threatened” if it might be in danger of extinction in the “foreseeable future.” The foreseeable future will be warmer. Rising average temperatures are a problem, but higher heat extremes are a bigger threat, according to a 2020 study.

Scientists have named climate change as the main cause of only a few extinctions worldwide. But experts expect that number to surge. Climate change has been “a factor in almost every species we've listed in at least the past 15 years,” Frazer says. Yet scientists struggle to forecast whether individual species can “persist in place or shift in space”—as Stein and his co-authors put it in a recent paper—or will be unable to adapt at all and will go extinct. On June 30 the FWS issued a new rule that will make it easier to move species outside their historical range—a practice it once forbade except in extreme circumstances.

Credit: June Minju Kim ( graphic ); Brown Bird Design ( illustrations ); Sources: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Environmental Conservation Online System; U.S. Federal Endangered and Threatened Species by Calendar Year https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/report/species-listings-by-year-totals ( annual data through 2022 ); Listed Species Summary (Boxscore) https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/report/boxscore ( cumulative data up to September 18, 2023, and annual data for coral ); Delisted Species https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/report/species-delisted ( delisted data through 2022 )

Eventually, though, “climate change is going to swamp the ESA,” says J. B. Ruhl, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, who has been writing about the problem for decades. “As more and more species are threatened, I don't know what the agency does with that.” To offer a practical answer, in a 2008 paper he urged the FWS to aggressively identify the species most at risk and not waste resources on ones that seem sure to expire.

Yet when I asked Frazer which urgent issues were commanding his attention right now, his first thought wasn't climate; it was renewable energy. “Renewable energy is going to leave a big footprint on the planet and on our country,” he says, some of it threatening plants and animals if not implemented well. “The Inflation Reduction Act is going to lead to an explosion of more wind and solar across the landscape.

Long before President Joe Biden signed that landmark law, conflicts were proliferating: Desert Tortoise versus solar farms in the Mojave Desert, Golden Eagles versus wind farms in Wyoming, Tiehm's Buckwheat (a little desert flower) versus lithium mining in Nevada. The mine case is a close parallel to that of Snail Darters versus the Tellico Dam. The flower, listed as endangered just last year, grows on only a few acres of mountainside in western Nevada, right where a mining company wants to extract lithium. The Center for Biological Diversity has led the fight to save it. Elsewhere in Nevada people have used the ESA to stop, for the moment, a proposed geothermal plant that might threaten the two-inch Dixie Valley Toad, discovered in 2017 and also declared endangered last year.

Does an absolute duty to preserve all endangered species make sense in such places? In a recent essay entitled “A Time for Triage,” Columbia law professor Michael Gerrard argues that “the environmental community has trade-off denial. We don't recognize that it's too late to preserve everything we consider precious.” In his view, given the urgency of building the infrastructure to fight climate change, we need to be willing to let a species go after we've done our best to save it. Environmental lawyers adept at challenging fossil-fuel projects, using the ESA and other statutes, should consider holding their fire against renewable installations. “Just because you have bullets doesn't mean you shoot them in every direction,” Gerrard says. “You pick your targets.” In the long run, he and others argue, climate change poses a bigger threat to wildlife than wind turbines and solar farms do.

For now habitat loss remains the overwhelming threat. What's truly needed to preserve the U.S.'s wondrous biodiversity, both Stein and Ruhl say, is a national network of conserved ecosystems. That won't be built with our present politics. But two more practical initiatives might help.

The first is the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, which narrowly missed passage in 2022 and has been reintroduced this year. It builds on the success of the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act, which funds state wildlife agencies through a federal excise tax on guns and ammunition. That law was adopted to address a decline in game species that had hunters alarmed. The state refuges and other programs it funded are why deer, ducks and Wild Turkeys are no longer scarce.

The recovery act would provide $1.3 billion a year to states and nearly $100 million to Native American tribes to conserve nongame species. It has bipartisan support, in part, Stein says, because it would help arrest the decline of a species before the ESA's “regulatory hammer” falls. Although it would be a large boost to state wildlife budgets, the funding would be a rounding error in federal spending. But last year Congress couldn't agree on how to pay for the measure. Passage “would be a really big deal for nature,” Curry says.

Oyster Mussel. Epioblasma capsaeformis.  Listed as Endangered: 1997. Status: Still endangered. Credit: © Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

The second initiative that could promote species conservation is already underway: bringing landowners into the fold. Most wildlife habitat east of the Rocky Mountains is on private land. That's also where habitat loss is happening fastest. Some experts say conservation isn't likely to succeed unless the FWS works more collaboratively with landowners, adding carrots to the ESA's regulatory stick. Bean has long promoted the idea, including when he worked at the Interior Department from 2009 to early 2017. The approach started, he says, with the Red-cockaded Woodpecker.

When the ESA was passed, there were fewer than 10,000 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers left of the millions that had once lived in the Southeast. Humans had cut down the old pine trees, chiefly Longleaf Pine, that the birds excavate cavities in for roosting and nesting. An appropriate tree has to be large, at least 60 to 80 years old, and there aren't many like that left. The longleaf forest, which once carpeted up to 90 million acres from Virginia to Texas, has been reduced to less than three million acres of fragments.

In the 1980s the ESA wasn't helping because it provided little incentive to preserve forest on private land. In fact, Bean says, it did the opposite: landowners would sometimes clear-cut potential woodpecker habitat just to avoid the law's constraints. The woodpecker population continued to drop until the 1990s. That's when Bean and his Environmental Defense Fund colleagues persuaded the FWS to adopt “safe-harbor agreements” as a simple solution. An agreement promised landowners that if they let pines grow older or took other woodpecker-friendly measures, they wouldn't be punished; they remained free to decide later to cut the forest back to the baseline condition it had been in when the agreement was signed.

That modest carrot was inducement enough to quiet the chainsaws in some places. “The downward trends have been reversed,” Bean says. “In places like South Carolina, where they have literally hundreds of thousands of acres of privately owned forest enrolled, Red-cockaded Woodpecker numbers have shot up dramatically.”

The woodpecker is still endangered. It still needs help. Because there aren't enough old pines, land managers are inserting lined, artificial cavities into younger trees and sometimes moving birds into them to expand the population. They are also using prescribed fires or power tools to keep the longleaf understory open and grassy, the way fires set by lightning or Indigenous people once kept it and the way the woodpeckers like it. Most of this work is taking place, and most Red-cockaded Woodpeckers are still living, on state or federal land such as military bases. But a lot more longleaf must be restored to get the birds delisted, which means collaborating with private landowners, who own 80 percent of the habitat.

Leo Miranda-Castro, who retired last December as director of the FWS's southeast region, says the collaborative approach took hold at regional headquarters in Atlanta in 2010. The Center for Biological Diversity had dropped a “mega petition” demanding that the FWS consider 404 new species for listing. The volume would have been “overwhelming,” Miranda-Castro says. “That's when we decided, ‘Hey, we cannot do this in the traditional way.’ The fear of listing so many species was a catalyst” to look for cases where conservation work might make a listing unnecessary.

An agreement affecting the Gopher Tortoise shows what is possible. Like the woodpeckers, it is adapted to open-canopied longleaf forests, where it basks in the sun, feeds on herbaceous plants and digs deep burrows in the sandy soil. The tortoise is a keystone species: more than 300 other animals, including snakes, foxes and skunks, shelter in its burrows. But its numbers have been declining for decades.

Urbanization is the main threat to the tortoises, but timberland can be managed in a way that leaves room for them. Eager to keep the species off the list, timber companies, which own 20 million acres in its range, agreed to figure out how to do that—above all by returning fire to the landscape and keeping the canopy open. One timber company, Resource Management Service, said it would restore Longleaf Pine on about 3,700 acres in the Florida panhandle, perhaps expanding to 200,000 acres eventually. It even offered to bring other endangered species onto its land, which delighted Miranda-Castro: “I had never heard about that happening before.” Last fall the FWS announced that the tortoise didn't need to be listed in most of its range.

Miranda-Castro now directs Conservation Without Conflict, an organization that seeks to foster conversation and negotiation in settings where the ESA has more often generated litigation. “For the first 50 years the stick has been used the most,” Miranda-Castro says. “For the next 50 years we're going to be using the carrots way more.” On his own farm outside Fort Moore, Ga., he grows Longleaf Pine—and Gopher Tortoises are benefiting.

Whooping Crane. Grus americana.  Listed as Endangered: 1967. Status: Still endangered. Credit: © Joel Sartore/National Geographic Photo Ark

The Center for Biological Diversity doubts that carrots alone will save the reptile. It points out that the FWS's own models show small subpopulations vanishing over the next few decades and the total population falling by nearly a third. In August 2023 it filed suit against the FWS, demanding the Gopher Tortoise be listed.

The FWS itself resorted to the stick this year when it listed the Lesser Prairie-Chicken, a bird whose grassland home in the Southern Plains has long been encroached on by agriculture and the energy industry. The Senate promptly voted to overturn that listing, but President Biden promised to veto that measure if it passes the House.

B ehind the debates over strategy lurks the vexing question: Can we save all species? The answer is no. Extinctions will keep happening. In 2021 the FWS proposed to delist 23 more species—not because they had recovered but because they hadn't been seen in decades and were presumed gone. There is a difference, though, between acknowledging the reality of extinction and deliberately deciding to let a species go. Some people are willing to do the latter; others are not. Bean thinks a person's view has a lot to do with how much they've been exposed to wildlife, especially as a child.

Zygmunt Plater, a professor emeritus at Boston College Law School, was the attorney in the 1978 Snail Darter case, fighting for hundreds of farmers whose land would be submerged by the Tellico Dam. At one point in the proceedings Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., asked him, “What purpose is served, if any, by these little darters? Are they used for food?” Plater thinks creatures such as the darter alert us to the threat our actions pose to them and to ourselves. They prompt us to consider alternatives.

The ESA aims to save species, but for that to happen, ecosystems have to be preserved. Protecting the Northern Spotted Owl has saved at least a small fraction of old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. Concern about the Red-cockaded Woodpecker and the Gopher Tortoise is aiding the preservation of longleaf forests in the Southeast. The Snail Darter wasn't enough to stop the Tellico Dam, which drowned historic Cherokee sites and 300 farms, mostly for real estate development. But after the controversy, the presence of a couple of endangered mussels did help dissuade the TVA from completing yet another dam, on the Duck River in central Tennessee. That river is now recognized as one of the most biodiverse in North America.

The ESA forced states to take stock of the wildlife they harbored, says Jim Williams, who as a young biologist with the FWS was responsible for listing both the Snail Darter and mussels in the Duck River. Williams grew up in Alabama, where I live. “We didn't know what the hell we had,” he says. “People started looking around and found all sorts of new species.” Many were mussels and little fish. In a 2002 survey, Stein found that Alabama ranked fifth among U.S. states in species diversity. It also ranks second-highest for extinctions; of the 23 extinct species the FWS recently proposed for delisting, eight were mussels, and seven of those were found in Alabama.

One morning this past spring, at a cabin on the banks of Shoal Creek in northern Alabama, I attended a kind of jamboree of local freshwater biologists. At the center of the action, in the shade of a second-floor deck, sat Sartore. He had come to board more species onto his photo ark, and the biologists—most of them from the TVA—were only too glad to help, fanning out to collect critters to be decanted into Sartore's narrow, flood-lit aquarium. He sat hunched before it, a black cloth draped over his head and camera, snapping away like a fashion photographer, occasionally directing whoever was available to prod whatever animal was in the tank into a more artful pose.

As I watched, he photographed a striated darter that didn't yet have a name, a Yellow Bass, an Orangefin Shiner and a giant crayfish discovered in 2011 in the very creek we were at. Sartore's goal is to help people who never meet such creatures feel the weight of extinction—and to have a worthy remembrance of the animals if they do vanish from Earth.

With TVA biologist Todd Amacker, I walked down to the creek and sat on the bank. Amacker is a mussel specialist, following in Williams's footsteps. As his colleagues waded in the shoals with nets, he gave me a quick primer on mussel reproduction. Their peculiar antics made me care even more about their survival.

There are hundreds of freshwater mussel species, Amacker explained, and almost every one tricks a particular species of fish into raising its larvae. The Wavy-rayed Lampmussel, for example, extrudes part of its flesh in the shape of a minnow to lure black bass—and then squirts larvae into the bass's open mouth so they can latch on to its gills and fatten on its blood. Another mussel dangles its larvae at the end of a yard-long fishing line of mucus. The Duck River Darter Snapper—a member of a genus that has already lost most of its species to extinction—lures and then clamps its shell shut on the head of a hapless fish, inoculating it with larvae. “You can't make this up,” Amacker said. Each relationship has evolved over the ages in a particular place.

The small band of biologists who are trying to cultivate the endangered mussels in labs must figure out which fish a particular mussel needs. It's the type of tedious trial-and-error work conservation biologists call “heroic,” the kind that helped to save California Condors and Whooping Cranes. Except these mussels are eyeless, brainless, little brown creatures that few people have ever heard of.

For most mussels, conditions are better now than half a century ago, Amacker said. But some are so rare it's hard to imagine they can be saved. I asked Amacker whether it was worth the effort or whether we just need to accept that we must let some species go. The catch in his voice almost made me regret the question.

“I'm not going to tell you it's not worth the effort,” he said. “It's more that there's no hope for them.” He paused, then collected himself. “Who are we to be the ones responsible for letting a species die?” he went on. “They've been around so long. That's not my answer as a biologist; that's my answer as a human. Who are we to make it happen?”

Robert Kunzig is a freelance writer in Birmingham, Ala., and a former senior editor at National Geographic, Discover and Scientific American .

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Time’s up: The 5 Steps To Prevent Animal Extinction

Why are animals dying out? In four words: we-are-doing-it. Let’s analyze the causes and discover 5 simple actions to take to save animals from extinction.

Recent studies are launching the alarm: we are on the verge of the sixth mass extinction .

Today, extinction rates are increasing, and this is only humans’ fault. According to a study  by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a total of 515 animal species are fading away. Likewise, Associations such as WWF are making the same appeal. We must do something, otherwise – by 2050 – polar bears, penguins and many more other animal species, will be only a far distant memory.

Do you remember the Giant Panda , the Tamarow, and the Iberian Lynx? Forget about them: they are included in the list of animals on the brink of extinction. You won’t even be able to recall how they look like, in a few years time. Extinction will wipe them out, as if they had never existed.

But, while stressing the importance of acting now , the associations launching the appeal are also drawing attention to one important fact connected to animal extinction. While the other 5 mass extinctions were the consequence of all-natural geological causes, the current mass extinction  is completely caused by men … by us .

The current extinction crisis (yes, it is a crisis … not a change!) is the consequence of many human-induced factors – which often combine. Some of them include habitat degradation (through poisoning, logging, urbanization), over-exploitation (overfishing and unsustainable agriculture), climate change  and pollution , illegal hunting and illegal wildlife trafficking… and unfortunately, the list could go on.

“The sixth mass extinction we are going through could be the most serious environmental threat to the survival of our civilization since it is irreversible” – experts say. By killing them, we are actually killing ourselves.

5 Steps to Prevent Animal Extinction

However, have you ever thought that we are the problem , and also the potential solution ? We have the power to stop animal extinction, and we must act now . Everyone can make a change, small may it be, to protect not only the animals, but the whole environment (including ourselves).

You won’t have a second chance, extinction is forever : starting from today you must take action. So why don’t you begin by following this 5-steps guide to prevent animal extinction? It is easy, convenient, and you won’t regret.

Bear this in mind: small actions can lead to great changes .

 1. Buy Eco-Friendly Products

Work for more environmentally-friendly (or at least more environmentally conscious) habits. First of all, beware and be aware of what you buy , and what you use . Always avoid buying potentially damaging products for the environment: avoid large corporations’ products that involve resources and processes which have a harmful impact on the animals – and especially on the endangered ones.

This also applies to cosmetics : avoid products made by companies that test their products on animals. Remember: we must stop animal testing, they don’t know the answer!

When buying, you must read the labels on the packaging, in order to make sure the production process of that item did not involve any animal testing, nor environmentally dangerous practices.

Also, always make sure the producer company of each product you buy, work in an environmentally sustainable way – being it food, clothes , or its packaging in general. This will help in saving animals’ habitats, especially those of endangered species. In doing so, you will prevent animal extinction.

2. Follow The 3-R Rule: Recycle, Reuse, Reduce

Separate and treat the discarded solid waste of the manufacture of new products. Come on, get creative! Recycle paper and cardboard, plastic, metals, glass and all the rest: you will be able to create new, fantastic objects.

Plastic waste is a potential threat for the environment, and this includes its accumulation on the Earth surface. Beside being a powerful pollutant for the environment as a whole, it can negatively affect wildlife habitat –  whether in the ocean or amongst nature.

The Recycling rule, applies especially for the products you buy. Make sure the packaging of your purchases (as well as its content) is made from recycled materials. Look for the special logo, and carry on with your purchase only if you see it! Also, have you ever tried second-hand products? If not, you should make it up: give it a try. It could be key in slowing down animal extinction.

The 3-R rule also applies to a more sustainable life in general: every small energy-saving change can have a huge impact on the health of threatened animals.

For example, by reducing the carbon footprint you may be able to help the environment, and improve your health at the same time.

Small actions, big changes

start by reducing the quantity of energy and fossil fuel you and your family use during the day. There are several ways of doing so:

• Replace light bulbs, switching to energy saving ones – such as fluorescent bulbs (if you can’t find them in supermarkets, which seems really odd today, online shopping can help). In fact, fluorescent lightbulbs can work by using less fossil fuel than conventional lightbulbs.
• Use a laptop instead of using a desktop computer when possible: laptops consume up to 5 times less!
• On your bike!? Bike to work instead of driving. And guess what, you won’t only reduce air pollution, but this will also have a positive impact on your wallet, and on your health.
• When leaving home, or at nighttime, make sure you turn off the heat and unplug the electronic facilities you have. Switching them off is not enough: you must unplug your laptop cords, your television, your phone charger, and even the kettle and the toaster in your kitchen. Did you know that even if you are not actually using these electronic gadgets, they still sap energy, just by being plugged in?

By following these tips you will be able to save not only energy and money, but you will also save the life of many endangered species.

3. Don’t Buy Souvenirs Made From Endangered Species

If you do so, you are not only risking a fine, you are also increasing extinction rates. Stay away from products made from endangered (but also still-not-so-endangered) species!

I see, you would really love to buy some iconic souvenirs on holiday, maybe to remind your family and friends the gorgeous places you visited – like a tropical beach or a South African Resort. But even if it doesn’t seem so, by making that purchase, you are actually increasing extinction rates (besides supporting illegal trading in poaching of wildlife!).

These products are filled with cruelty and pain, for the animals who suffered in the production process.

The illegal wildlife trade is estimated to be worth billions and billions of dollars each year. And if on the one hand it is mostly controlled by criminal gangs, it is also very much supported by the hundreds of millions of people going on foreign holidays and buying this type of souvenirs.

These items include materials such as tortoiseshell, ivory, reptile skins, furs, coral . Also, try to step into the animals’ shoes: have you ever thought that no one else needs a fur but a tiger? And, that no one else needs a rhino horn but a rhino? Or, that no one else needs a tortoiseshell but a tortoise?

Think this through, you know the answer.

4. Eat Less Meat

Be greener! We are literally “eating our way to extinction”. The meat industry is not only damaging farmed animals, but also wild ones – and especially the ones in danger of extinction. Studies warn that meat-eaters are actually speeding worldwide animals extinction.

By killing them, we are killing ourselves

Our appetite for beef, for dairy, for fish is wiping out animals, and even threatening our own survival.

“You eat a steak, you kill a lemur in Madagascar. You eat a chicken, you kill an Amazonian parrot”, says geophysicist expert Gidon Eshel, in order to make people realise the full impact of meat consumption on biodiversity.

Beef , dairy, and fishing industries are today the leading cause of extinction . This also connects to the loss of habitat due to land clearing, but also overfishing and pollution.

First, the vast majority of land clearing is to graze cattle for the meat industry, and to raise crops to feed farmed animals. Can you imagine that currently almost one-third of our planet’s surface is used for these purposes alone, and that this trend is even increasing? This is crazy. Almost 80% of former Amazon forests are now used for grazing cattle for meat.

By doing this, we are not only destroying the natural habitat of countless animals, but we are also destroying the ‘lungs of the Earth’, and as a consequence our own life.

For what concerns fishing, the greatest extinction danger is over-exploitation: in other words, we are fishing them to extinction in order to satisfy our needs.

In addition, many experts have explored the links between modern livestock production and other issues such as climate change and pollution ; which eventually lead to animal extinction. For example, animal agriculture is responsible for almost 15% of climate emissions on a world scale, more than all the cars, trains, and planes.

Meat-eaters are supporting the unsustainable production practices of the meat industry, and as a consequences they are speeding worldwide species extinction rate. We must change the way we eat and produce ‘food’: the current situation is having a catastrophic impact on almost all animal species across the globe.

Every meal counts

By eating less meat – whether one day a week or one meal a day – you will lower your dietary carbon footprint and take a step to protect wildlife.

If you change your eating habits, you will change the agricultural food market. This will result in more sustainable industries – because the meat demand-supply relation will be changed forever. It is simple: if you don’t demand, they won’t produce.

A plant-based diet (or at least a diet which involves reducing the amount of meat and fish you eat) is one of the easiest , yet stronger ways, to use our planet’s resources more responsibly, and protect animals at the same time. In addition, plant-based food uses less water , have a lower impact on the environment, and guess what…it’s delicious.

So why don’t you save a Lemur and a Parrot today?!

5. Spread Awareness: get involved

Tell the world! Let’s Stop the sixth mass extinction.

Talk to your family and friends. If you can’t convince them to change their habits, at least try to warn them, and make them more aware of their actions. Start by spreading the advantages of buying eco-friendly products, of eating less meat, and of buying souvenir-greeting-cards when on holiday!

Last but not least, be a voice for endangered species on social media : share posts, reels, tag your followers. Social media are also a great way of getting informed, and eventually, take more direct action. Stand for animals! together we can stop animal extinction.

In a nutshell: the next endangered species is literally us

Mass extinction seems a long way away, but actually, it is just around the corner . And even if you don’t care about endangered species, and you don’t love animals (which is basically impossible) this is not an excuse to sit back and watch. You still must act. In fact, if endangered species actually become extinct, many serious consequences will follow.

In short, biodiversity is not just important because animals are nice to look at (although, if you are an animal lover, this is a bonus point to convince you!)…But beyond their beauty, each of these animal species is part of a whole system.

If you remove one part of the system, the system is no longer in balance, and will eventually collapse. In the long run this will lead to the extinction of every single species, including the human one.

We must stop this terrifying ripple effect because our own survival is at risk. Nature, and the ecosystems of plants and animals that live within it, is literally what is keeping us alive.

And this is why you should care about animal extinction.

So what are you doing today to extinguish extinction? Save them, save yourself.

Featured image: Photo by Hans-Jurgen Mager on Unsplash

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Stay up to date:, future of the environment.

• Wildlife population sizes dropped by 68% between 1970 and 2018.
• Species are becoming extinct quicker nowadays than ever before.
• Biodiversity is vital to the health and livelihoods of the planet's eight billion people.

Earth’s fate and the devastation of the natural world were recently put under the microscope with the release of Sir David Attenborough’s Netflix documentary A Life On Our Planet .

It marks a departure from his usual nature documentary format and instead grieves for the damage wreaked by climate change and other forms of human interference.

Have you read?

David attenborough leads call for world to invest $500 billion a year to protect nature, david attenborough: 'the garden of eden is no more'. read his davos speech in full, sir david attenborough has just joined instagram – and already broken a world record.

It’s an emotional watch, as the naturalist recounts the environmental changes he has seen first-hand throughout his career, such as the devastation of the Borneo rainforest and its native orangutan population.

Here are nine reasons we too should be concerned about the future of the planet and the millions of species which call it home.

1. More than one million species are now at risk of extinction

Over a million species of animal and plant life are now threatened with dying out – more than ever before in human history, according to the International Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

2. Wildlife population sizes dropped by two thirds since 1970

There has been an average 68% drop in global population sizes of amphibians, birds, fish mammals and reptiles between 1970 and 2016, according to the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 .

3. Tropical sub-regions of Americas showing biggest declines

The WWF study added that there was a 94% decline of wildlife populations in tropical sub-regions of the Americas over the 50 years from 1970 – the largest fall observed anywhere on Earth.

4. Species dying off more frequently than ever before

Species are dying off 1,000 times more frequently today than during the 60 million years before the arrival of humans, according to a 2014 study by Brown University in the US. The report reinforces the “urgency to conserve what is left”, said lead author Jurriaan de Vos.

5. Freshwater species declining faster than anything else

Populations of freshwater wildlife species are declining disportionately faster than others, dropping by an average of 84% between 1970 and 2018, WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 showed. The figure also marks a rise of 1% on the 83% reported two years ago.

6. Swathes of tropical forest lost to agriculture

Some 100 million hectares of tropical forest were lost between 1980 and 2000, according to the IPBES. This was largely down to cattle ranching in Latin America and plantations in South-East Asia, researchers added.

7. Nearly 40% of plants at risk of extinction

Four in 10 (39.4%) plants are at risk of dying out, according to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report. An additional challenge is identifying them before extinction, with 1,942 new species of plants identified last year alone.

8. Industrial agriculture driving decline of insects

Dramatic rates of decline could lead to over 40% of the world’s insect species disappearing within decades – with habitat loss due to industrial agriculture the main driver behind the decrease, according to a study published in Science Direct.

9. Bird species also seeing populations threat

Some 3.5% of domesticated birds have become extinct since 2016, the IPBES reported. In addition, nearly a quarter (23%) of threatened birds have already been affected by climate change, The global assessment report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services added.

Our ocean covers 70% of the world’s surface and accounts for 80% of the planet’s biodiversity. We can't have a healthy future without a healthy ocean - but it's more vulnerable than ever because of climate change and pollution.

Tackling the grave threats to our ocean means working with leaders across sectors, from business to government to academia.

The World Economic Forum convenes the Friends of Ocean Action , a coalition of global leaders from a wide range of sectors who are working together to protect the seas. From a programme to scale blue carbon benefits through coordinated action with governments to unlock finance, strengthen and empower local communities, to a global partnership to catalyze science-based actions towards healthy and sustainable blue food value chains, the Forum’s Ocean Action Agenda is pushing for new solutions and aiming to support 1000 Ocean Startups by 2030 that are creating a wave of innovation to address global challenges.

The Forum's Ocean Action Agenda also works closely with our industry partners, such as offshore wind developers and ports, to support them in their transitions towards a nature positive and net zero future. Climate change is an inextricable part of the threat to our ocean, with rising temperatures and acidification disrupting fragile ecosystems. The Forum runs a number of initiatives to support the shift to a low-carbon economy , including hosting the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, who have cut emissions in their companies by 9%.

Is your organization interested in working with the World Economic Forum? Find out more here .

Why is biodiversity important?

Both the 2019 IPBES and 2020 WWF reports stress that the loss of habitats and species pose as much of a threat to life on Earth as climate change.

For biodiversity is not only vital for a flourishing natural world. Its deterioration also threatens the livelihoods, economies, food security and health of the world's eight billion people – a fact brought into sharp focus by the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

But all is not lost. While Attenborough brands the damage as human kind’s “greatest mistake”, his final message is more optimistic: “If we act now, we can yet put it right.”

What can we do to save the planet?

Experts agree that one of the best ways of saving the planet is through transformation of the global food system, with agriculture accounting for nearly 60% of global biodiversity loss and about a quarter of CO2 emissions worldwide .

Consumers can make a difference by choosing to eat less meat and making more sustainable food choices, as farming animals uses a lot of land and water.

Meanwhile farmers can be supported to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides, diversify crops and phase out ploughing to lessen the environmental impact.

Conservation is also vital to reverse the loss of biodiversity, with the IPBES highlighting the importance of involving the local community – to benefit nature and people alike.

The devastation of biodiversity and climate change are two sides of the coin, so measures to reduce carbon emissions and pollution – such as travelling less, using greener forms of energy and making more eco-friendly consumer choices – are also key.

For as Attenborough says: “If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us.” As the world continues to suffer the fallout of COVID-19, perhaps never before has such as sentiment been more important.

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License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Endangered Species

An endangered species is a type of organism that is threatened by extinction. Species become endangered for two main reasons: loss of habitat and loss of genetic variation.

Biology, Ecology, Geography, Conservation

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An endangered species is a type of organism that is threatened by extinction . Species become endangered for two main reasons: loss of habitat and loss of genetic variation . Loss of Habitat A loss of habitat can happen naturally. Nonavian dinosaurs , for instance, lost their habitat about 65 million years ago. The hot, dry climate of the Cretaceous period changed very quickly, most likely because of an asteroid striking Earth. The impact of the asteroid forced debris into the atmosphere , reducing the amount of heat and light that reached Earth’s surface. The dinosaurs were unable to adapt to this new, cooler habitat. Nonavian dinosaurs became endangered, then extinct . Human activity can also contribute to a loss of habitat. Development for housing, industry , and agriculture reduces the habitat of native organisms. This can happen in a number of different ways. Development can eliminate habitat and native species directly. In the Amazon rainforest of South America, developers have cleared hundreds of thousands of acres. To “clear” a piece of land is to remove all trees and vegetation from it. The Amazon rainforest is cleared for cattle ranches , logging , and ur ban use. Development can also endanger species indirectly. Some species, such as fig trees of the rainforest, may provide habitat for other species. As trees are destroyed, species that depend on that tree habitat may also become endangered. Tree crowns provide habitat in the canopy , or top layer, of a rainforest . Plants such as vines, fungi such as mushrooms, and insects such as butterflies live in the rainforest canopy. So do hundreds of species of tropical birds and mammals such as monkeys. As trees are cut down, this habitat is lost. Species have less room to live and reproduce . Loss of habitat may happen as development takes place in a species range . Many animals have a range of hundreds of square kilometers. The mountain lion ( Puma concolor ) of North America, for instance, has a range of up to 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles). To successfully live and reproduce, a single mountain lion patrols this much territory. Urban areas , such as Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, grew rapidly during the 20th century. As these areas expanded into the wilderness, the mountain lion’s habitat became smaller. That means the habitat can support fewer mountain lions. Because enormous parts of the Sierra Nevada, Rocky, and Cascade mountain ranges remain undeveloped, however, mountain lions are not endangered. Loss of habitat can also lead to increased encounters between wild species and people. As development brings people deeper into a species range, they may have more exposure to wild species. Poisonous plants and fungi may grow closer to homes and schools. Wild animals are also spotted more frequently . These animals are simply patrolling their range, but interaction with people can be deadly. Polar bears ( Ursus maritimus ), mountain lions, and alligators are all predators brought into close contact with people as they lose their habitat to homes, farms , and businesses. As people kill these wild animals, through pesticides , accidents such as collisions with cars, or hunting, native species may become endangered.

Loss of Genetic Variation Genetic variation is the diversity found within a species. It’s why human beings may have blond, red, brown, or black hair. Genetic variation allows species to adapt to changes in the environment. Usually, the greater the population of a species, the greater its genetic variation. Inbreeding is reproduction with close family members. Groups of species that have a tendency to inbreed usually have little genetic variation, because no new genetic information is introduced to the group. Disease is much more common, and much more deadly, among inbred groups. Inbred species do not have the genetic variation to develop resistance to the disease. For this reason, fewer offspring of inbred groups survive to maturity. Loss of genetic variation can occur naturally. Cheetahs ( Acinonyx jubatus ) are a threatened species native to Africa and Asia. These big cats have very little genetic variation. Biologists say that during the last Ice Age , cheetahs went through a long period of inbreeding. As a result, there are very few genetic differences between cheetahs. They cannot adapt to changes in the environment as quickly as other animals, and fewer cheetahs survive to maturity. Cheetahs are also much more difficult to breed in captivity than other big cats, such as lions ( Panthera leo ). Human activity can also lead to a loss of genetic variation. Overhunting and overfishing have reduced the populations of many animals. Reduced population means there are fewer breeding pairs . A breeding pair is made up of two mature members of the species that are not closely related and can produce healthy offspring. With fewer breeding pairs, genetic variation shrinks. Monoculture , the agricultural method of growing a single crop , can also reduce genetic variation. Modern agribusiness relies on monocultures. Almost all potatoes cultivated , sold, and consumed, for instance, are from a single species, the Russet Burbank ( Solanum tuberosum ). Potatoes, native to the Andes Mountains of South America, have dozens of natural varieties. The genetic variation of wild potatoes allows them to adapt to climate change and disease. For Russet Burbanks, however, farmers must use fertilizers and pesticides to ensure healthy crops because the plant has almost no genetic variation. Plant breeders often go back to wild varieties to collect genes that will help cultivated plants resist pests and drought, and adapt to climate change. However, climate change is also threatening wild varieties. That means domesticated plants may lose an important source of traits that help them overcome new threats. The Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps a “Red List of Threatened Species.” The Red List de fines the severity and specific causes of a species’ threat of extinction. The Red List has seven levels of conservation: least concern , near threatened , vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered , extinct in the wild , and extinct. Each category represents a different threat level. Species that are not threatened by extinction are placed within the first two categories—least concern and near-threatened. Those that are most threatened are placed within the next three categories, known as the threatened categories —vulnerable, endangered, and critically endangered. Those species that are extinct in some form are placed within the last two categories—extinct in the wild and extinct. Classifying a species as endangered has to do with its range and habitat, as well as its actual population. For this reason, a species can be of least concern in one area and endangered in another. The gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ), for instance, has a healthy population in the eastern Pacific Ocean, along the coast of North and South America. The population in the western Pacific, however, is critically endangered.

Least Concern Least concern is the lowest level of conservation . A species of least concern is one that has a widespread and abundant population. Human beings are a species of least concern, along with most domestic animals , such as dogs ( Canis familiaris ) and cats ( Felis catus ). Many wild animals, such as pigeons and houseflies ( Musca domestica ), are also classified as least concern. Near Threatened A near threatened species is one that is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future. Many species of violets , native to tropical jungles in South America and Africa, are near threatened, for instance. They have healthy populations, but their rainforest habitat is disappearing at a fast pace. People are cutting down huge areas of rainforest for development and timber . Many violet species are likely to become threatened. Vulnerable Species The definitions of the three threatened categories (vulnerable, endangered, and critically endangered) are based on five criteria: population reduction rate , geographic range, population size, population restrictions , and probability of extinction . Threatened categories have different thresholds for these criteria. As the population and range of the species decreases, the species becomes more threatened. 1) Population reduction rate A species is classified as vulnerable if its population has declined between 30 and 50 percent. This decline is measured over 10 years or three generations of the species, whichever is longer. A generation is the period of time between the birth of an animal and the time it is able to reproduce. Mice are able to reproduce when they are about one month old. Mouse populations are mostly tracked over 10-year periods. An elephant's generation lasts about 15 years. So, elephant populations are measured over 45-year periods. A species is vulnerable if its population has declined at least 50 percent and the cause of the decline is known. Habitat loss is the leading known cause of population decline. A species is also classified as vulnerable if its population has declined at least 30 percent and the cause of the decline is not known. A new, unknown virus , for example, could kill hundreds or even thousands of individuals before being identified. 2) Geographic range A species is vulnerable if its “ extent of occurrence ” is estimated to be less than 20,000 square kilometers (7,722 square miles). An extent of occurrence is the smallest area that could contain all sites of a species’ population. If all members of a species could survive in a single area, the size of that area is the species’ extent of occurrence. A species is also classified as vulnerable if its “ area of occupancy ” is estimated to be less than 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles). An area of occupancy is where a specific population of that species resides. This area is often a breeding or nesting site in a species range. 3) Population size Species with fewer than 10,000 mature individuals are vulnerable. The species is also vulnerable if that population declines by at least 10 percent within 10 years or three generations, whichever is longer. 4) Population restrictions Population restriction is a combination of population and area of occupancy. A species is vulnerable if it is restricted to less than 1,000 mature individuals or an area of occupancy of less than 20 square kilometers (8 square miles). 5) Probability of extinction in the wild is at least 10 percent within 100 years. Biologists, anthropologists, meteorologists , and other scientists have developed complex ways to determine a species’ probability of extinction. These formulas calculate the chances a species can survive, without human protection, in the wild. Vulnerable Species: Ethiopian Banana Frog The Ethiopian banana frog ( Afrixalus enseticola ) is a small frog native to high- altitude areas of southern Ethiopia. It is a vulnerable species because its area of occupancy is less than 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles). The extent and quality of its forest habitat are in decline. Threats to this habitat include forest clearance, mostly for housing and agriculture. Vulnerable Species: Snaggletooth Shark The snaggletooth shark ( Hemipristis elongatus ) is found in the tropical, coastal waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Its area of occupancy is enormous, from Southeast Africa to the Philippines, and from China to Australia. However, the snaggletooth shark is a vulnerable species because of a severe population reduction rate. Its population has fallen more than 10 percent over 10 years. The number of these sharks is declining due to fisheries, especially in the Java Sea and Gulf of Thailand. The snaggletooth shark’s flesh, fins, and liver are considered high-quality foods. They are sold in commercial fish markets, as well as restaurants. Vulnerable Species: Galapagos Kelp Galapagos kelp ( Eisenia galapagensis ) is a type of seaweed only found near the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Galapagos kelp is classified as vulnerable because its population has declined more than 10 percent over 10 years. Climate change is the leading cause of decline among Galapagos kelp. El Niño, the natural weather pattern that brings unusually warm water to the Galapagos, is the leading agent of climate change in this area. Galapagos kelp is a cold-water species and does not adapt quickly to changes in water temperature.

Endangered Species 1) Population reduction rate A species is classified as endangered when its population has declined between 50 and 70 percent. This decline is measured over 10 years or three generations of the species, whichever is longer. A species is classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 70 percent and the cause of the decline is known. A species is also classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 50 percent and the cause of the decline is not known. 2) Geographic range An endangered species’ extent of occurrence is less than 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles). An endangered species’ area of occupancy is less than 500 square kilometers (193 square miles). 3) Population size A species is classified as endangered when there are fewer than 2,500 mature individuals. When a species population declines by at least 20 percent within five years or two generations, it is also classified as endangered. 4) Population restrictions A species is classified as endangered when its population is restricted to less than 250 mature individuals. When a species’ population is this low, its area of occupancy is not considered. 5) Probability of extinction in the wild is at least 20 percent within 20 years or five generations, whichever is longer.

Endangered Species: Scimitar -horned Oryx The scimitar-horned oryx ( Oryx dammah ) is a species of antelope with long horns. Its range extends across northern Africa. Previously, the scimitar-horned oryx was listed as extinct in the wild because the last confirmed sighting of one was in 1988. However, the first group of scimitar-horned oryx was released back into the wild in Chad, in August 2016, and the population is growing. Overhunting and habitat loss, including competition with domestic livestock , are the main reasons for the decline of the oryx’s wild population. Captive herds are now kept in protected areas of Tunisia, Senegal, and Morocco. Scimitar-horned oryxes are also found in many zoos . Critically Endangered Species 1) Population reduction rate A critically endangered species’ population has declined between 80 and 90 percent. This decline is measured over 10 years or three generations of the species, whichever is longer. A species is classified as critically endangered when its population has declined at least 90 percent and the cause of the decline is known. A species is also classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 80 percent and the cause of the decline is not known. 2) Geographic range A critically endangered species’ extent of occurrence is less than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles). A critically endangered species’ area of occupancy is estimated to be less than 10 square kilometers (4 square miles). 3) Population size A species is classified as critically endangered when there are fewer than 250 mature individuals. A species is also classified as critically endangered when the number of mature individuals declines by at least 25 percent within three years or one generation, whichever is longer. 4) Population restrictions A species is classified as critically endangered when its population is restricted to less than 50 mature individuals. When a species’ population is this low, its area of occupancy is not considered. 5) Probability of extinction in the wild is at least 50 percent within 10 years or three generations, whichever is longer. Critically Endangered Species: Bolivian Chinchilla Rat The Bolivian chinchilla rat ( Abrocoma boliviensis ) is a rodent found in a small section of the Santa Cruz region of Bolivia. It is critically endangered because its extent of occurrence is less than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles). The major threat to this species is loss of its cloud forest habitat. People are clearing forests to create cattle pastures .

Critically Endangered Species: Transcaucasian Racerunner The Transcaucasian racerunner ( Eremias pleskei ) is a lizard found on the Armenian Plateau , located in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey. The Transcaucasian racerunner is a critically endangered species because of a huge population decline, estimated at more than 80 percent during the past 10 years. Threats to this species include the salination , or increased saltiness, of soil . Fertilizers used for agricultural development seep into the soil, increasing its saltiness. Racerunners live in and among the rocks and soil, and cannot adapt to the increased salt in their food and shelter. The racerunner is also losing habitat as people create trash dumps on their area of occupancy. Critically Endangered Species: White Ferula Mushroom The white ferula mushroom ( Pleurotus nebrodensis ) is a critically endangered species of fungus. The mushroom is critically endangered because its extent of occurrence is less than 100 square kilometers (39 square miles). It is only found in the northern part of the Italian island of Sicily, in the Mediterranean Sea. The leading threats to white ferula mushrooms are loss of habitat and overharvesting. White ferula mushrooms are a gourmet food item. Farmers and amateur mushroom hunters harvest the fungus for food and profit. The mushrooms can be sold for up to $100 per kilogram (2.2 pounds). Extinct in the Wild A species is extinct in the wild when it only survives in cultivation (plants), in captivity (animals), or as a population well outside its established range. A species may be listed as extinct in the wild only after years of surveys have failed to record an individual in its native or expected habitat.

Extinct in the Wild: Monut Kaala Cyanea The Mount Kaala cyanea ( Cyanea superba ) is a large, flowering tree native to the island of Oahu, in the U.S. state of Hawai‘i. The Mount Kaala cyanea has large, broad leaves and fleshy fruit. The tree is extinct in the wild largely because of invasive species. Non-native plants crowded the cyanea out of its habitat, and non-native animals such as pigs, rats, and slugs ate its fruit more quickly than it could reproduce. Mount Kaala cyanea trees survive in tropical nurseries and botanical gardens . Many botanists and conservationists look forward to establishing a new population in the wild. Extinct A species is extinct when there is no reasonable doubt that the last remaining individual of that species has died. Extinct: Cuban Macaw The Cuban macaw ( Ara tricolor ) was a tropical parrot native to Cuba and a small Cuban island, Isla de la Juventud. Hunting and collecting the birds for pets led to the bird’s extinction. The last specimen of the Cuban macaw was collected in 1864. Extinct: Ridley’s Stick Insect Ridley’s stick insect ( Pseudobactricia ridleyi ) was native to the tropical jungle of the island of Singapore. This insect, whose long, segmented body resembled a tree limb, is only known through a single specimen, collected more than 100 years ago. During the 20th century, Singapore experienced rapid development. Almost the entire jungle was cleared, depriving the insect of its habitat.

Endangered Species and People When a species is classified as endangered, governments and international organizations can work to protect it. Laws may limit hunting and destruction of the species’ habitat. Individuals and organizations that break these laws may face huge fines. Because of such actions, many species have recovered from their endangered status. The brown pelican ( Pelecanus occidentalis ) was taken off the endangered species list in 2009, for instance. This seabird is native to the coasts of North America and South America, as well as the islands of the Caribbean Sea. It is the state bird of the U.S. state of Louisiana. In 1970, the number of brown pelicans in the wild was estimated at 10,000. The bird was classified as vulnerable. During the 1970s and 1980s, governments and conservation groups worked to help the brown pelican recover. Young chicks were reared in hatching sites, then released into the wild. Human access to nesting sites was severely restricted. The pesticide DDT , which damaged the eggs of the brown pelican, was banned. During the 1980s, the number of brown pelicans soared. In 1988, the IUCN “delisted” the brown pelican. The bird, whose population is now in the hundreds of thousands, is now in the category of least concern.

Convention on Biological Diversity The Convention on Biological Diversity is an international treaty to sustain and protect the diversity of life on Earth. This includes conservation, sustainability, and sharing the benefits of genetic research and resources. The Convention on Biological Diversity has adopted the IUCN Red List of endangered species in order to monitor and research species' population and habitats. Three nations have not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity: Andorra, the Holy See (Vatican), and the United States.

Lonesome George Lonesome George was the only living member of the Pinta Island tortoise ( Chelonoidis abingdoni ) known to exist. The Pinta Island tortoise was only found on Pinta, one of the Galapagos Islands. The Charles Darwin Research Station, a scientific facility in the Galapagos, offered a $10,000 reward to any zoo or individual for locating a single Pinta Island tortoise female. On June 25, 2012, Lonesome George died, leaving one more extinct species in the world.

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The Importance of Saving a Species From Extinction Essay

Extinction is the total disappearance of a species from the earth’s surface. It leads to a lack of surviving members of some species to reproduce in order create a new generation of the extinct species. Different plants and animals due to various reasons, which are either natural or man-made. These reasons are habitat degradation, over exploitation of available resources, agricultural monocultures, poaching and commercial hunting, human-wildlife or human-induced climate change and destruction of land to build factories and residential areas. Protecting a rare species of animals or plants is therefore a responsibility of all human beings to ensure the betterment of our planet (Cunningham, & Saigo, 2005).

Animal or plant species’ protection from extinction is beneficial because all species are important for balance in the nature world. Moreover, some animals and plants are key in the field of medicine since they provide raw materials used to produce different drugs. These species may include the African clawed frog that secretes antibiotics, the dogfish shark which has cancer fighting molecules. In addition, chemicals found in certain plants assist in treatment of Hodgkin’s disease and other types of cancers. Also, some extracts from specific and rare marine animals has a unique ability to act as anti-cancer agents. (Cunningham, & Saigo, 2005).

Extinction of some species has varied effects because the balance of nature will be broken. For example, a breach in a food chain may cause a drastical increase of some species in over a short period since there will be no consumers in the ecosystem. This growth leads to increased competition for food and space causing starvation ad leading to a disbalance. The predators will also experience lack of feood, and as a result, they will starve to death, which may cause the possibility of their extinction.

The elimination of one organism from an ecosystem, therefore, serves as a domino effect causing the disappearance of other numerous organisms. The introduction of new cloning technology will further accelerate the process of extinction since the easier it is to clone an organism, the lesser efforts are directed towards the protection of the whole species (Ehrlich, 1983).

Extinction is irreversible as a species that becomes extinct is lost forever, and thus, the expensive efforts required to protect animals facing extinction are justified. Protection of different rare and endangered species is achievable. As a solution to this global issue, an investment of 0.1% of global GDP in environment protection will ensure the pay off a large chunk of the ecological debt (Ehrlich, 1983).

Biodiversity refers to genes, species and ecosystems. The toughness of an area’s immune system is dependent on the area’s riches in terms of biodiversity. Hence, biodiversity is vital in preserving food security and allows ecosystems to adapt to different natural disturbances like earthquakes, fires and floods. Thus, a loss of biodiversity will also have a tremendous impact on medicine and healthcare, among all the rest spheres of life (Miller, 2013).

Extinction of certain species will also hinder scientific research, which aims at finding new way of treating different diseases and production of new drugs and vaccines. Such medicines are usually hard to develop as they cannot (or are hard to) be produced artificially, thus their manufacture is expensive in nature as their source is not easy to get. Genetic diversity helps in the prevention of diseases and enables adaptation of different species to changes in their environment.

Apart from medicine, the some plants and animals are able to provide raw materials for the manufacture of clothing, cosmetics, and household goods. Hence, it is important to protect the rare species from extinction due to various reasons mentioned above.

Cunningham, M. A., & Saigo, B. W. (2005). Environmental Science: A global concern . Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Ehrlich, A. H. (1983). Extinction: The causes and consequences of the Disappearance Of species . New York: Ballantine Books.

Miller, D., A. (2013). Biodiversity . Detroit: Green haven Press.

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IvyPanda. (2022, April 8). The Importance of Saving a Species From Extinction. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-importance-of-saving-a-species-from-extinction/

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Why protect species

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The alarm has been raised repeatedly about the decline in biodiversity across the planet.

By allowing this decline to continue, we erode the very foundations of our traditions, economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and even the existence of life worldwide.

Why Are Species Important?

The millions of species on land, in freshwater and in the ocean have evolved over millennia and form the web of life that sustains the planet. Species and their populations are the building blocks of ecosystems, individually and collectively securing the conditions for life. They provide food, medicine and raw materials. They are the basis of soil formation, decomposition, water filtration and flow, pollination, pest control and climate regulation. They are the primary source of income and resources for hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

Species are an essential part of the history, culture, tradition and folklore of every culture on Earth and their aesthetic values and spiritual roles provide comfort and inspiration as well as recreation.

The Species Emergency

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ reveals that a quarter of all species face high risk of extinction. Human activity has severely altered more than 75% of the Earth’s land and freshwater areas, and 66% of the oceans. Climate change and political instability are exacerbating this crisis at all levels.

Species loss at current rates will eliminate the vital ecological, economic and cultural roles that they fulfil. The crisis goes beyond species loss; human pressures mean that a vast array of species are experiencing dramatic population declines (often irreversible) to a level that affects their future and our resource base. It is beyond question that the current way of life is unsustainable and transformational change is vital.

The world’s people must accept responsibility for this emergency and act now to ensure we pass on a rich natural heritage to future generations.

The key threats that are driving population declines and extinctions include :

Habitat loss & degradation

Climate change

Invasive alien species

Human-wildlife conflict

Disruption of water flow

Over-exploitation of natural resources & prey depletion

Reduced genetic diversity

• Over the last few years, we have seen how the world has changed: from youth to business , the global community has now recognised the irreplaceable and vital role of biodiversity and its intrinsic link to the climate change crisis we are facing.
• Biodiversity is affected by climate change, with negative consequences for human health, but biodiversity , through the ecosystem services it supports, also makes an important contribution to both climate-change mitigation and adaptation: conserving and sustainably managing biodiversity is critical to addressing climate change (Secretariat on Convention on Biological Diversity, 2019).
• We cannot overcome climate change without the help of ecosystems: they provide up to 35% of the solutions that can help keep global warming below 2°C (Griscom et all, 2017).
• Yet, the current global response if insufficient: more than 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction (IPBES, 2019).
• The current rate of species extinction has no precedent since the dinosaurs’ extinction 66 million years ago.

Make a difference

Help us bring threatened species back from the brink of extinction. Make a difference by donating today .

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Extinction of Animals Essay

This  extinction of animals essay question appeared recently in the IELTS test.

It is about how animals become extinct and whether humans should take steps to prevent this from happening.

It is a natural process that animal species become extinct, as the dinosaurs did in the past. There is no reason for people to prevent this from happening.

To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Choosing a Side

With agree / disagree type essays you can discuss both sides of the issue but you can come down firmly on one side and focus on only this in your response.

This can be an easier way to answer such questions and is certainly recommended if you are just needing the lower band scores, such as 7 and especially 6.

This is an example of an essay where the writer disagrees with the opinion and has given three reasons for this, set out in three body paragraphs.

For the higher band scores there is a risk the examiner thinks for a fully addressed answer , both sides of the issue should have been considered. So if you need a band 8 or 9, look at both sides of the issue as in this model answer.

Take a look at the model answer for this animal extinction essay and the comments below.

Extinction of Animals Essay Sample

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Write about the following topic:

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own experience or knowledge.

Write at least 250 words.

Model Answer

It is commonly known that many species have gone extinct throughout history, including the dinosaurs. Some argue that preventing extinction is not necessary, as it is a natural process. However, I believe that humans have a moral obligation to protect endangered species and prevent their extinction.

Firstly, human activities such as deforestation, overfishing, and pollution have caused a rapid decline in animal populations, leading many species to be at risk of extinction. As a result, humans have a responsibility to conserve the environment and prevent further harm to wildlife. It is unfair for humans to cause the extinction of a species due to their actions, particularly when they have the ability to prevent it.

Another reason is that many species play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. For example, bees are essential pollinators that are responsible for pollinating 80% of flowering plants, and thus if bees were to become extinct, it would have a devastating impact on our food supply and ecosystem. Similarly, the loss of predators can cause a ripple effect, leading to overpopulation of other species and causing imbalances in the food chain.

Lastly, preventing extinction is not only a matter of responsibility but also a matter of morality. Species have intrinsic value, and it is not our place to determine which species should exist and which should not. Humans must respect the inherent value of all life forms and do what they can to protect them.

In conclusion, while extinction may be a natural process, it is not a justification for humans to sit idly by and watch as countless species go extinct. By taking action to conserve the environment, humans can ensure that future generations can enjoy the same diversity of life that we have today.

(294 Words)

This extinction of animals essay would achieve a high IELTS band score.

It's organised well so would score highly for coherence and cohesion . It has a clear introduction that introduces the topics and then gives the writers opinion (the thesis statement).

Each body paragraph clearly sets out and explains a key idea, then the conclusion summarises the writers view and gives some final thoughts. The linking between sentences is also very good.

It has a clear opinion and that opinion is reflected in the response. The ideas are fully supported and explained. The question is fully addressed and the essay does not go off-topic. It would therefore score highly for task response . 

The essay also had a good range of high-level and accurate lexis and grammar , so it would also score well for those criteria.

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Biodiversity Loss Increases the Risk of Disease Outbreaks, Analysis Suggests

Researchers found that human-caused environmental changes are driving the severity and prevalence of disease, putting people, animals and plants at risk

Christian Thorsberg

Daily Correspondent

Human-driven changes to the planet are bringing widespread and sometimes surprising effects—including shifting the Earth’s rotation , hiding meteorites in Antarctic ice and, potentially, supporting locust swarms .

Now, a large-scale analysis of nearly 1,000 scientific studies has shown just how closely human activity is tied to public health. Published last week in the journal Nature ,   the findings suggest anthropogenic environmental changes are making the risk of infectious disease outbreaks all the more likely.

The biodiversity crisis—which has left some one million plant and animal species at risk of extinction —is a leading driver of disease spread, the researchers found.

“It could mean that by modifying the environment, we increase the risks of future pandemics,” Jason Rohr , a co-author of the study and a biologist at the University of Notre Dame, tells the Washington Post ’s Scott Dance.

The analysis centered on earlier studies that investigated at least one of five “global change drivers” affecting wildlife and landscapes on Earth: biodiversity change, climate change, habitat change or loss, chemical pollution and the introduction of non-native species to new areas. Based on the previous studies’ findings, they collected nearly 3,000 data points related to how each of these factors might impact the severity or prevalence of infectious disease outbreaks.

Researchers aimed to avoid a human-centric approach to their analysis, considering also how plants and animals would be at risk from pathogens. Their conclusions showed that four of the examined factors—climate change, chemical pollution, the introduction of non-native species to new areas and biodiversity loss—all increased the likelihood of spreading disease, with the latter having the most significant impact.

Disease and mortality were nearly nine times higher in areas of the world where human activity has decreased biodiversity, compared to the levels expected by Earth’s natural variation in biodiversity, per the Washington Post .

Scientists hypothesize this finding could be explained by the “dilution effect”: the idea that pathogens and parasites evolve to thrive in the most common species, so the loss of rarer creatures makes infection more likely.

“That means that the species that remain are the competent ones, the ones that are really good at transmitting disease,” Rohr tells the New York Times ’   Emily Anthes.

For example, white-footed mice, the main carriers of Lyme disease, have become one of the most dominant species in their habitat as other, rarer animals have disappeared—a change that might have played a role, among other factors, in driving rising rates of Lyme disease in the United States.

One global change factor, however, actually decreased the likelihood of disease outbreaks: habitat loss and change. But here, context is key. Most habitat loss is linked to creating a single type of environment—urban ecosystems—which generally have good sanitation systems and less wildlife, reducing opportunities for disease spillover.

“In urban areas with lots of concrete, there is a much smaller number of species that can thrive in that environment,” Rohr tells the Guardian ’s Phoebe Weston. “From a human disease perspective, there is often greater sanitation and health infrastructure than in rural environments.”

Deforestation, another type of habitat loss, has been shown to increase the likelihood of disease. The incidence of malaria and Ebola , for example, worsens in such instances.

The new work adds to past research on how human activity can prompt the spread of disease. For instance, climate change-induced permafrost melt may release pathogens from the Arctic , a concern that’s been well-documented in recent years. And both habitat loss and climate change may force some animals to move closer together—and closer to humans — increasing the potential for transmitting disease .

Additionally, the research signals the need for public health officials to remain vigilant as the effects of human-caused climate change play out, experts say.

“It’s a big step forward in the science,” Colin Carlson , a global change biologist at Georgetown University who was not an author of the new analysis, tells the New York Times. “This paper is one of the strongest pieces of evidence that I think has been published that shows how important it is health systems start getting ready to exist in a world with climate change, with biodiversity loss.”

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue , Sierra  magazine, Discover  magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal .

Essay on How Can We Protect Endangered Animals

Students are often asked to write an essay on How Can We Protect Endangered Animals in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on How Can We Protect Endangered Animals

Understanding endangered animals.

Endangered animals are species at risk of becoming extinct. We need to protect them to maintain balance in nature.

How to Protect Them?

We can protect endangered animals by preserving their habitats. This means not cutting down forests or polluting rivers.

Role of Laws

Laws should be made to protect these animals. Hunting, poaching, and illegal trade of endangered species should be strictly punished.

Importance of Education

Educating people about the importance of these animals and the need to protect them can also help in their conservation.

Remember, every creature has a role in our ecosystem.

250 Words Essay on How Can We Protect Endangered Animals

Understanding the plight of endangered species.

Endangered animals are those species that are at risk of extinction, primarily due to human activities. The loss of these species can significantly disrupt ecosystems, leading to environmental imbalance.

Legal Measures for Protection

One of the most potent ways to protect endangered animals is through legislation. Laws like the Endangered Species Act in the U.S. have been instrumental in saving numerous species from extinction. These laws prohibit activities that may harm endangered species and their habitats, and enforce penalties for violations.

Conservation Efforts

Conservation efforts such as creating wildlife sanctuaries and national parks provide a safe haven for endangered species. These protected areas restrict human activities, allowing animals to thrive in their natural habitats. Captive breeding programs also play a significant role in the preservation of endangered species, especially for those with dwindling populations.

Public Awareness and Education

Public awareness is a crucial tool in the fight against animal extinction. By educating people about the importance of biodiversity and the consequences of species loss, we can foster a sense of responsibility and encourage proactive conservation efforts.

Protecting endangered animals is a collective responsibility that requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders. Through legal measures, conservation efforts, and public education, we can ensure the survival of these species and maintain the balance of our ecosystems. The preservation of endangered animals is not just about saving individual species; it’s about preserving the intricate web of life on Earth.

500 Words Essay on How Can We Protect Endangered Animals

Introduction.

Endangered animals are those species at risk of becoming extinct due to various factors such as habitat loss, climate change, and human activities. The protection of these species is a pressing issue that requires global attention and concerted efforts. This essay explores strategies for protecting endangered animals.

Legislation and Enforcement

One of the most effective ways to protect endangered species is through legislation. Laws like the Endangered Species Act in the United States and the Wildlife Protection Act in India aim to protect threatened species and their habitats. However, laws are only effective if they are enforced. Therefore, governments should invest in training and equipping law enforcement agencies to tackle wildlife crimes.

Conservation Education and Public Awareness

Education is a powerful tool in the fight against species extinction. By raising public awareness about the plight of endangered animals and the importance of biodiversity, we can foster a culture of conservation. Schools, universities, and media platforms can play a significant role in this regard.

Habitat Protection and Restoration

Habitat loss is a significant threat to endangered species. Protecting and restoring habitats can help ensure the survival of these species. Establishing protected areas, implementing sustainable land use practices, and restoring degraded ecosystems are some ways to achieve this.

Scientific Research and Breeding Programs

Scientific research can provide valuable insights into the biology and ecology of endangered species, informing conservation strategies. Additionally, captive breeding and reintroduction programs can help increase population numbers and genetic diversity.

International Cooperation

Wildlife conservation is a global issue that transcends national boundaries. International cooperation is crucial for the protection of migratory species and combating wildlife trafficking. Treaties like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) facilitate such cooperation.

Protecting endangered animals is a complex task that requires a multifaceted approach. It involves not only the creation and enforcement of laws but also education, habitat protection, scientific research, and international cooperation. By working together, we can ensure the survival of these species and the preservation of our planet’s biodiversity.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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• Essay on My Favourite Animal Cat

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Threatened species have declined 2% a year since 2000. Nature positive? Far from it.

Senior Lecturer, Public Sector Management, School of Business, UNSW Sydney

Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne

Professor of Conservation Biology, The University of Queensland

Disclosure statement

Megan C Evans has received funding from various sources, including the Australian Research Council through a Discovery Early Career Research Award (2020-2023), the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, WWF Australia, and the National Environmental Science Program's Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Brendan Wintle has received funding from The Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, the NSW State Government, the Queensland State Government, the Commonwealth National Environmental Science Program, the Ian Potter Foundation, the Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. Wintle is a Board Director of Zoos Victoria and a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council.

Hugh Possingham works for the University of Queensland, Accounting for Nature, and the Biodiversity Council. He currently receives grant funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with over 20 organisations providing pro-bono or limited renumeration, board or committee level advice. These include: BirdLife Australia (vice-President), The University of Adelaide (Environment Institute Board Chair), various state and federal governments, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (Board Chair), AgForce, and several NGOs, etc.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

UNSW Sydney and University of Queensland provide funding as members of The Conversation AU.

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Our government has great aspirations. It has committed to end extinctions and expand our protected areas to cover 30% of every Australian ecosystem by 2030. This is part of its Nature Positive Plan , aligned with the 2022 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity pact . The goal is not just to conserve nature but to restore what is being lost.

But how can these goals be reconciled with a budget that allocated more public money to carbon capture and storage than biodiversity?

This week’s federal budget was a new low point for investment in nature. Environmental groups roundly criticised the “ bad budget for nature ”, which delivered next-to-no money to protect and recover Australia’s unique and threatened biodiversity.

Research has shown Australians want at least 2% of the federal budget spent on nature. Instead, less than 0.1% of the budget spend will support biodiversity in some way. Over the past decade, biodiversity funding has gone down 25% relative to GDP.

Let’s say the government decided it was finally time to roll up the sleeves and do something. How would they go about it? What would it take to actually reverse the decline, as the government says it wants to in its Nature Positive approach?

Our threatened species populations have been declining by about 2-3% a year over the past 20 years. The first step is to stop the fall. Then the challenge is to restore dwindling species and ecosystems.

The Dow Jones for threatened species goes down, down, down

Australia now has a Threatened Species Index . Think of it like the Dow Jones for wildlife. It uses trend data from bird, mammal and plant species collected from over 10,000 sites to measure progress for nature in Australia.

Last year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers talked up the index as part of the first national “wellbeing budget” , which aimed to measure Australia’s progress across a range of social, health and sustainability indicators.

What does the index tell us? You can see for yourself. The health of our threatened species has fallen by about 2-3% a year since the turn of the century.

If, as is likely, the trend continues, it will lead to the extinction of many more of our unique native animals and plant species. It will signal the failure of the government’s Nature Positive policy and a global biodiversity tragedy.

Given we have had decades of successive decline, what would be needed to reach the goal of nature positive?

Nature positive actually has a very specific meaning . It would:

halt and reverse nature loss measured from a baseline of 2020, through increasing the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations and ecosystems so that by 2030 nature is visibly and measurably on the path of recovery.

This definition gives us a clear, measurable timeline for action, often described as nature’s answer to net zero .

To reach nature positive means halting biodiversity loss by 2030 so that in the future there is much more biodiversity, relative to a 2020 baseline.

What would that look like using the Threatened Species Index? To get on track with nature positive, we would have to stop the index declining, stabilise, and then increase from 2030 onwards.

Of course, strong environmental laws and aligned policies are needed to effectively prevent further loss of habitat.

But we also need to invest in restoring what has been lost. Scientists think this is possible with $2 billion a year to recover our most threatened native plants and animals, and another $2 billion annually to drive ecosystem restoration across Australia.

The budget is not nature positive

In the budget papers , the government uses the Threatened Species Index as a performance measure for its nature positive goal. It expects the trajectory of the index to be “maintained or improved” out to 2027-28.

But given our species and ecosystems are steadily declining, year after year, to maintain a trajectory is simply to embrace the decline. It’s not nature positive at all. The government could make minor improvements, slowing the collapse, and claim it was improving the lot of nature.

Imagine if our GDP growth was negative and the government’s goal was merely to slow its decline over the next five years – there would be national uproar.

If the government is serious about nature positive – which is an excellent goal – it would be setting more ambitious targets. For instance, the goal could be for the index to climb back up to 2020 levels by the end of the decade.

Instead, Labor is planning for biodiversity decline to continue, while describing it as “nature positive”.

Watching over the steady decline of our species and calling it nature positive makes about as much sense as opening up new gas fields and calling it net zero.

Greenwashing Nature Positive

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the government has engaged in nature positive greenwash .

In coming weeks, the government will introduce bills to parliament to establish two new agencies, Environment Information Australia and Environmental Protection Australia. But there will be one bill missing – the reformed federal environment laws , intended to give teeth to the nature positive push.

The laws were pushed back indefinitely , to the shock of scientists and environmental groups.

But let’s be generous and say these laws finally make it to parliament after the next election. Would they be enough to stop our species losses and put the Threatened Species Index onto a nature positive trajectory?

It’s unlikely .

The consultation documents show the government is aiming to deliver “net positive outcomes”, whereby development impacts to threatened species and ecosystems are more than compensated for.

But we don’t know the detail. How much improvement is the government aiming for? In the draft laws, this figure is listed simply as “at least X%”.

Time to aim higher

It is hard not to feel dispirited over the government’s backtracking on its promise to:

not shy away from difficult problems or accept environmental decline and extinction as inevitable.

But we cannot give up. As the plight of nature worsens, even iconic species such as the koala and platypus are now at risk. As ecosystems collapse , our food security, health and wellbeing, communities and businesses will suffer.

Perhaps one day we will have a government able to grasp the nettle and actually tackle the nature crisis – for the sake of all of us.

Read more: Australia's long-sought stronger environmental laws just got indefinitely deferred. It's back to business as usual

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Midwest biologists named Endangered Species Recovery Champions 

Passion, perseverance and dedication are crucial in the effort to prevent extinction of our most imperiled wildlife and plants. These are hallmarks of the three biologists named as 2022 Recovery Champion Award winners. We at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are pleased to announce Dr. M. Chris Barnhart of Missouri, and Scott Pruitt and Lori Pruitt of Indiana, are Midwest Region winners among more than a dozen national Recovery Champions honored for their work. 

“Every year we recognize individuals whose outstanding work has made survival possible for threatened and endangered species,” said Chuck Traxler, acting regional director for the Midwest Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, we applaud Chris, Lori and Scott, who have devoted their careers to preventing extinction of freshwater mussels and bats. Their work showcases how to overcome challenges, work with partners and think outside the box in the effort to prevent extinction.” 

Recently retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Scott Pruitt and Lori Pruitt of Bloomington, Indiana, each played leading roles in the conservation and recovery work for the endangered Indiana bat. Working first as a wildlife biologist and then as the Indiana Ecological Services Field Office supervisor, Scott spent 34 years studying Indiana bats and other endangered bat species, monitoring bat populations, and seeking innovative ways to work with partners and landowners to conserve bats throughout the state and beyond. He was instrumental in establishing the former Jefferson Proving Ground in southern Indiana as Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge, a haven for Indiana bats, and developed new ways to counter the impact of wind turbines on Indiana bats and other species. Lori Pruitt served 28 years as a wildlife biologist at the Indiana Field Office, serving as national lead for Indiana bat recovery. Lori also advocated for bats, reaching out to educators and conservation partners and developing educational materials and curricula to spread the word about the importance of bats. 

Both Scott and Lori worked with the Indianapolis Airport during its expansion to conserve nearby bat habitat and establish nearby Sodalis Nature Park, which provides habitat for bats and recreation and bat education for visitors. 

“As insect eaters and pollinators, bats are incredibly important to our environment and our economy,” said Traxler. “Scott and Lori brought leadership, expertise and advocacy to bat conservation in the midwest and around the country, and we are grateful for their stewardship.” 

We recognized Dr. M. Chris Barnhart of Springfield, Missouri, for his tireless efforts to conserve freshwater mussels, among the most endangered wildlife in North America. For more than 30 years, Barnhart studied mussels while collaborating with state and federal wildlife agencies, universities, research centers, Tribal Nations and other partners across the country.  During his tenure at Missouri State University, Barnhart became world-renowned for advancements in mussel propagation, developing innovative systems that many others have used across the country to produce imperiled mussel species. Throughout his career, Barnhart worked to recover more than 10 federally listed mussel species, pioneered toxicity testing guidelines for mussels and mentored dozens of graduate and undergraduate and foreign exchange students who are now active in mollusk recovery across the world. Barnhart also raised awareness of freshwater mussels and their importance through outreach, including images of rarely seen mussel behavior.  

“Freshwater mussels thrive in good water and healthy surroundings. When they’re in trouble, we need to pay attention to our environment,” said Traxler. “Dr. Barnhart’s work has shed light on conserving these silent sentinels and made their future more secure.” 

The Endangered Species Act provides a critical safety net for fish, wildlife and plants and has prevented the extinction of hundreds of imperiled species, as well as promoted the recovery of many others, and conserved the habitats upon which they depend.   

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The Kiwi Makes a Startling but Careful Comeback

At a sanctuary on New Zealand’s North Island, the long-endangered flightless birds have grown so much in number that they are being transported to other areas to start new colonies.

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By Pete McKenzie

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week’s issue is written by Pete McKenzie, a reporter based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Capturing a kiwi is more challenging than I expected. Despite standing just two feet tall, an adult bird is armed with pistonlike legs and razor-sharp claws. And, according to Will Kahu, a ranger with the conservation group Save the Kiwi, “They’re surprisingly feisty.”

He recalled one standoff that ended with a kiwi leaping through the air, kicking him in the chest and sprinting off while he tumbled to the ground.

Which is how I found myself squatting safely atop a fallen tree in Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari, a fenced-in nature reserve on New Zealand’s North Island, while Mr. Kahu and several volunteers extracted a bird from its burrow in the rotting trunk beneath me.

“One leg, two legs — got it,” Dave Laithwaite, a volunteer at the sanctuary, said while groping around in the mud in the kiwi’s narrow den. He pulled the writhing bird out, then calmed it by cradling it like a baby.

The kiwi, New Zealand’s national bird, has seen a resurgence in numbers thanks to conservation efforts. In 2005, several kiwis were placed in the Maungatautari sanctuary in a last-ditch effort to prevent them from being hunted to extinction by predators like stoats and ferrets.

Now, more than 2,500 of the fiercely territorial birds live on Sanctuary Mountain, which is quickly running out of space for them. To relieve the pressure, conservationists caught and exported 209 kiwis to new homes across the country last week.

“It’s the biggest kiwi translocation ever,” Mr. Kahu said.

“My feeling is of celebration,” said Bodie Taylor, a representative of an Indigenous tribe that helps run Sanctuary Mountain. “To hear them tangi” — cry — “and see them running free, it opens your heart.”

Most remarkable is the way these flightless birds are being moved: by plane.

After the hunt, I drove to Waikato Airport behind a van full of squeaking birds.

“We’re here for the Sanctuary Mountain flight,” Steven Cox, a conservation ranger, said to an airport receptionist when we arrived.

The receptionist asked what the cargo was.

“Kiwi,” Mr. Cox said. The receptionist said she’d call over her manager.

Outside, two planes from an aeronautics club in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, taxied across a runway. Conservationists prefer to transport kiwis by plane when relocating them across long distances to minimize travel time and stress on the birds.

“It’s pretty cool,” Kai Furst-Jaeger, the pilot, said as he helped load the birds onto the planes. “I didn’t think I’d get to handle kiwi in my lifetime.”

There were once 12 million kiwis in New Zealand, but the species was devastated after humans introduced predators like ferrets, rats and stoats. In areas with predators, less than 10 percent of hatchlings survive six months. Roughly 70,000 birds belonging to five species remain, mostly in fenced-in reserves or on remote islands.

But intensive efforts by government rangers, volunteer trappers and conservationists at refuges like Sanctuary Mountain have propelled the growth of some kiwi species. The species at Sanctuary Mountain, the North Island brown kiwi, is expected to see its population increase by 10 percent over the next three generations.

That is allowing conservationists to take risks: the birds from Sanctuary Mountain are going to reserves that are not fenced in. While trapping has eliminated most predators at these reserves, the kiwis there still face dangers.

“We know some kiwi may die in the wild, but we have to build large populations with resilience,” said Michelle Bird, a coordinator for Save The Kiwi. “We’re looking at the population level.”

I hopped into an aircraft packed with six birds. As we rattled down the runway, I cast a worried eye at the crates.

“It must be a weird experience for them,” I said.

“Yeah, I hear flying isn’t their strong suit,” Chris Forbes, the pilot, joked. He told me he laughed when Wellington Aero Club asked for volunteers to help flightless kiwis soar.

We flew between the snow-capped mountains of Ruapehu and Taranaki, then followed the coastline past Kapiti Island to Wellington. Below us lay sprawling fields with occasional towns and roadways: a landscape that has changed dramatically since kiwis roamed freely several centuries ago, when much of the land was native forest.

“I’ve heard no squawks from the kiwi,” Mr. Forbes said as we approached Wellington.

“I suppose that’s a good sign,” I replied.

We touched down smoothly, then pulled into a warehouse where half a dozen volunteers were waiting. Within minutes, the crates were loaded into several cars and on their way to the city’s western edge, where the conservation group Capital Kiwi has spent five years establishing a predator-free zone. After being reintroduced into the area in 2022, the kiwi bred there for the first time in living memory.

Now, Sanctuary Mountain has sent 100 of the birds to the area to supercharge Wellington’s growing kiwi population. As night fell, we unloaded the crates at the Karori Golf Course, which lies at the foot of the predator-free area. At the last hole, a tribal representative released a kiwi into a stand of native bush. As the kiwi scurried away, a native owl hooted in the starlight.

“It provides hope,” Ms. Bird said of the kiwi transfer. “And hope is important.”

Here are this week’s stories.

Australia and New Zealand

The Hard Road to ‘Furiosa’ Was Filled With Detours . For George Miller, Anya Taylor-Joy and their crew, a series of natural disasters made for an arduous production.

Alarmed by Climate Change, Astronomers Train Their Sights on Earth . In Australia and elsewhere, a growing number of researchers are using their expertise to fight the crisis.

The Unusual Evolutionary Journey of the Baobab Tree . New research shows the “upside-down trees” originated in Madagascar and then caught a ride on ocean currents to reach mainland Africa and Australia.

Around The Times

As Russia Advances, NATO Considers Sending Trainers Into Ukraine . The move could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war. The Biden administration continues to say there will be no American troops on the ground.

Dancing Past the Venus de Milo . The Louvre is joining in the celebration of the Paris Olympics by opening up for dance and exercise classes early in the morning.

At a Supreme Court Justice’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display. An upside-down U.S. flag, adopted by Trump supporters contesting President Biden’s victory, flew over Justice Samuel Alito’s front lawn in 2021 as the court was considering an election case.

Slovakia’s Politics Were Toxic Long Before Its Prime Minister Was Shot . Years of vitriolic rhetoric, worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, left Slovakia with bitter political division.

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