Top 10 Threats of Biodiversity

Biodiversity threats 

1. Climate Change :- 

The release of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, when burning fossil fuels for energy causes climate change. Not only does climate change involve an increase in average global temperature, but it also results in unpredictable weather patterns. Climate change threatens biodiversity through a variety of mechanisms and can cause species range shifts, mismatched biotic interactions, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. 

2. Invasive Species :-

Invasive species are non-native organisms that, when introduced to an area out of its native range, disrupt the community they invade. Non-native (exotic) refers to species occurring outside of their historic distribution. Invasive species have been intentionally or unintentionally introduced by humans into an ecosystem in which they did not evolve. Human transportation of people and goods, including the intentional transport of organisms for trade, has dramatically increased the introduction of species into new ecosystems. These new introductions are sometimes at distances that are well beyond the capacity of the species to ever travel itself and outside the range of the species’ natural predators. Invasive species can cause ecological and economic damage. They threaten other species through competition for resources, predation, or disease.

3.pollution:- 

Pollution occurs when chemicals, particles, or other materials are released into the environment, harming the organisms there. For many thousands of years, ever since they built the first campfire, human activity has generated air, water, and soil pollution. For most of human history, however, these contaminants had relatively little environmental impact. But over the last few centuries, pollution levels skyrocketed as a result of population growth and the Industrial Revolution. As a result, regulations have been enacted to control emissions. Even where these are effective in curbing current pollution sources, high levels of contamination may exist from past activity. And new contamination can occur through industrial accidents or other inadvertent releases of toxic substances.

4.Overexploitation:-

When a renewable resource is harvested to the point of diminishing returns, it is referred to as overexploitation. Overexploitation that continues could eventually cause the resource to disappear.

5. Changes in Habitat:-

Natural occurrences such as droughts, illnesses, fires, hurricanes, mudslides, volcanoes, earthquakes, small changes in seasonal temperature or precipitation, etc. can cause habitat alteration.

6.Overharvesting:-

This includes targeted hunting, gathering, or fishing for a particular species as well as incidental harvesting such as bycatch in ocean fisheries. The megafauna extinction example earlier was an example of overharvesting causing biodiversity loss.

Ocean fisheries have been particularly vulnerable to overharvesting during the post-WWII period because of technological developments like refrigeration, sonar, larger nets, and onboard processing. The cod fishery in the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean was an important commercial fishery for hundreds of years, but only a few decades of intense harvesting using these new technologies in the late twentieth century led to a population collapse. The population declined by over 90%, and fishing for the species was closed in both Canada and the United States. The loss of a top predator like cod, along with reductions of other top predator fish populations like haddock and flounder, has led to an explosion in prey fish populations like herring, capelin and shrimp. Cod populations have not recovered, despite fishing pressures ceasing, and this observation has made researchers speculate that the ecosystem may now be in an alternative stable state that will prevent the recovery of cod populations any time in the near future.

7. Human Population:- 

In the year 1800, there were fewer than 1 billion people on earth, and today there are about 6.8 billion. Even without the vast increases in per capita resource use that have occurred during this period, the pressures on biodiversity would have increased during this time period simply based on population growth. While the impacts that each human has on biodiversity varies widely depending on the types and amounts of resources that he or she uses (as in the I=PAT equation), overall, increasing populations have lead to increasing threats to biodiversity.

8.Habitat Loss :- 

This occurs when a particular area is converted from usable to unusable habitat. Industrial activities, agriculture, aquaculture, mining, deforestation, and water extraction are all central causes of habitat loss. This includes deforestation for wood for cooking food. Habitat fragmentation, the loss of large units of habitat, is also a serious threat to biodiversity. The picture below shows an example of habitat fragmentation in the Amazon rainforest.

9. Interactions among drivers of biodiversity loss:- 

As explained above, in most places, more than one of these factors is having an impact on biodiversity. It often requires a closer look at a particular place to understand the interplay between habitat loss, invasive species, human population, pollution, overharvesting, and other factors that affect biodiversity. For example, an increasing human population with high meat-consumption patterns and loose environmental regulations may increase deforestation rates for agriculture and cattle grazing, resulting in habitat loss and nitrogen pollution from synthetic fertilizers. Arguably, human population is not a driver of biodiversity loss in and of itself, but it tends to intensify and interact with other drivers.

10. Other Potential Threats:- 

Aside from the five threats above, there are still a lot of drivers that may either directly or indirectly contribute to the loss of biodiversity. One good example is wildlife epidemics and infectious diseases like Ebola, infectious bursal disease, and flu. This phenomenon does not only affect wildlife but also human health as well.

• Aside from this, human-induced activities, including economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and demographic factors, also impact biodiversity. The desiccation of wetlands and soils due to the excessive pumping of water tables often contributes to the death of organisms living in these environments.
• Overusing natural parks and watersheds as tourist destinations and recreational spots also threaten biodiversity because humans cause too much noise and perturbations that disrupt the animals’ normal activities.

 Related terms :-

• Biodiversity threats
• Natural biodiversity threats
• Top biodiversity threats
• Threats of biodiversity