How Human Population Impacts on Wildlife?

Humans are now responsible for causing changes in the environment that hurt animals and plant species. We take up more space on Earth for our homes and cities. We pollute habitats. We illegally hunt and kill animals. We bring exotic species into habitats. All of these activities take resources and habitats away from plants and animals. Check out this site to learn major problems caused by overpopulation.

human population growth

Human activity often changes or destroys the habitats that plants and animals need to survive. Because human populations are growing so fast, animals and plants are disappearing 1000 times faster than they have in the past 65 million years. Scientists estimate that in the 21st century 100 species will become extinct every day.

Animals and plants have always had a hard time surviving. Scientists estimate that over two thirds of the animals and plants that once lived on Earth are now extinct.

Animals became extinct in the past for a wide variety of reasons. In some cases competition for resources among animals led to extinction, in other cases environmental changes caused extinction.

Scientists think dinosaurs became extinct because a meteorite struck the Earth and caused changes in the environment that the dinosaurs and other animals and plants couldn't adapt to.

Some animals are endangered because of a combination of natural and man-made causes.

Manatees need warm water to survive. In the winter they live in southern Florida and parts of Georgia. In the summer they can migrate as far north as Virginia and west to Louisiana. Sometimes manatees die because they don't migrate back to warm water soon enough.

Manatees can also die when they get caught in fishing nets. Manatees only give birth every two to five years and they only have one calf at a time. Because their reproduction rate is so low and mortality rates are high, manatee populations are endangered.

The human population’s impact on wildlife is much more than a failure of self-interested, logical stewardship. After all, we absolutely must protect the environmental conditions necessary for our own prosperity on our home planet.

Learn Possible Solutions To Overpopulation

Every day we add 227,000 more people to the planet — and the UN predicts that the human population will surpass 11 billion by the end of the century. As the world's population grows, so do its demands for water, land, trees and fossil fuels — all of which come at a steep price for already endangered plants and animals.

There is good news — in the 21st century, solutions to the population challenges are many. They are progressive. They strengthen human rights and improve human health. They are things we should be doing anyway. And they contribute toward solving some of today’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.

There are many books and novels too that give solutions to overpopulation and give a message that Earth is in danger and only we hold the responsibility to save it.

world human population

Following are some possible solutions to human overpopulation:

1. Empower women

Studies show that women with access to reproductive health services find it easier to break out of poverty, while those who work are more likely to use birth control. The United Nations Population Fund aims to tackle both issues at once, running microcredit projects to turn young women into advocates for reproductive health.

2. Promote family planning

Simply educating men and women about contraception can have a big impact. When Iran introduced a national family planning programme in 1989, its fertility rate fell from 5.6 births per woman to 2.6 in a decade. A similar effort in Rwanda saw a threefold increase in contraception usage in just five years.

3. Make education entertaining

The US-based Population Media Center gets creative to reach women. Its radio soap operas, which feature culturally specific stories about reproductive issues, have been heard by as many as 500 million people in 50 countries. In Ethiopia, 63 per cent of women seeking reproductive health services reported tuning in.

These are some of the common ways to curb overpopulation.