Habitat Destruction / Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat destruction or habitat fragmentation is a broad category that can pose the most significant threat to biodiversity as conservation. Habitat fragmentation, which is the lessening of habitats into scattered patches, also brings about immense changes to the composition of biodiversity, as apart from habitat destruction, which can have more total effects.

• Alien-Invasive Species

Another threat to biodiversity is the introduction of a non-native alien-invasive species into an ecosystem. Humans have introduced more than 330 non-native species into ecosystems worldwide. One only needs to remember how kiwi birds are endangered in New Zealand due to the introduction of animals such as cats for example by settlers. Alien-invasive species need not only be predators to destroy native ecosystems. They can also degrade ecosystems by competing for resources like water, and inviting other predators into the food web for example with mice, etc. Like with habitat destruction, the introduction of alien-invasive species has also exponentially increased with the progress of anthropogenic development. You must be familiar with the environmental damage caused and threat posed to our native species by invasive weed species like carrot grass, Argemone, Lantana and water hyacinth.

• Over-harvesting / Over-Exploitation of resources

We are living in an era of high mass consumption, and as such there is incredible strain on the harvesting and exploitation of biological resources. Billions of people depend on biological resources for not only food but also for other economic and daily needs. As such billions of biological units are harvested for human use. One particular area where over-harvesting and over-exploitation have become a flag-point issue is commercial fishing.

According to the Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations (UN), about 18 per cent of global fishing stocks are reported to be over-exploited and about 10 per cent of global fishing stocks have become significantly depleted. Figures such as these have serious implications for species extinction.

Pollution

Pollution can severely impact ecosystems by causing diseases and other health problems among organisms in an ecosystem. Sometimes, pollution can affect a particular species, such as how an oil spill can severely impact aquatic life forming habitats near the ocean’s surface. The dangers can be particularly stark if an endangered species is exposed to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), leading to severe health issues such as dysfunction in the endocrine systems and other effects and can severely impact their populations, including changes if any in their reproductive abilities.

• Knock-on Effects

With the addition or withdrawal of species into or out of food webs, there can be certain cascading knock-on effects. One example is that of insect pollinators that are specialized, whose extinction would affect the reproductive abilities of plants dependent on the insect pollinators, thus having cascading effects on the food web in the ecosystem.

The great problem with knock-on effects is that often these kind of effects can be greatly unpredictable, making their mitigation even more difficult, if not required to be avoided altogether.

• Climate Change

The possible effects of Climate Change on biodiversity as conservation have been greatly discussed, with the major problem being that its ongoing effects such as the melting of sea ice habitats in the Polar Regions have not been as greatly perceptible in the larger public life.

CO-EXTINCTION:

• When a species becomes extinct, the plant and animal species associated with it in an obligatory way also become extinct.

• When a host fish species becomes extinct, its unique assemblage of parasites also meets the same fate.

• Another example is the case of a coevolved plant-pollinator mutualism where extinction of one invariably leads to the extinction of the other.

THREATS TO BIODIVERSITY | GS ARTICLES

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