Should More Be Done to Protect and Preserve Endangered Animals?

Igor Novitskyi        

Professor Chavez

English A1

14 September  2016

Should more be done to protect and preserve endangered animals?

Recently I was walking through the park and saw the cat's eyes. In those eyes I read the plea of the animal. It was neither a plea for help, nor a  hungry request. The animal just wants to live and breathe. It is very symbolic that the word “animal” comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath. From the very beginning on our planet there were animals that have extinct, and those that become endangered. Probably everyone thought about the dinosaurs, which disappeared as a class more than 200 million years ago. Some people don't care much about the extinction of animals, they boldly associate this with natural selection and “survival of the fittest”. People don't even notice that almost 90 percent of the animals that are endangered first of all suffer from human activities. Air pollution, deforestation, destruction of soils and hunting directly affects the population animals. For years conservationists have fought to protect endangered animals from poaching, predation, habitat loss and pollution, but now it seem that they may have been not very successful. Today it is impossible to find Dodo, Caspian Tiger or Irish Deer, these animals simply extinct. The list of animal species that are being threatened to be extinct is much longer. As we can see contemporary animal protection and nature conservation is insufficient.

One may ask: “What are the benefits of preserving the endangered animals?” The first and the most important benefit is economic. Preserved endangered animals can be used in ecotourism. Such tourism may educate the traveler, provide funds for ecological conservation and directly improve the economic situation in a country. Therefore, if authorities invests bigger sums on nature conservation, the GDP of the country will quickly increase.

Second benefit is connected with cultural heritage. Definite animals including endangered ones represent definite territory. We undoubtedly associate Panda bear with China, Kangaroo with Australia and Zebra with Africa. What if this animals extinct? In their representational role, animals can be compared with flag or anthem. How we can distinguish one culture from another without characteristic features?

We also shouldn’t forget that endangered animals are extremely vital to ecosystem in general. The ecosystem is similar to the game Jenga, in which the role players are the people on one side and natural selection on the other. Each block holds one another and each time you remove one you risk the entire construction falling. If a person is careless of what block to pull out, that natural selection well comprehends its move. Just like the blocks, animals are interdependent, and when one species disappear, it will cause a chain reaction. For example, let us imagine that a certain plant have extinct. The animals depended on it for food will starve. Even small change in nature can have large effect. This effect scientists call as “butterfly effect”. Animal extinction can result in instability of a food chain, biodiversity fade, starvation etc. Moreover extinct or endangered species best of all indicates that the health of the ecosystem is beginning to devastate. If predatory animals extinct, carnivorous will overpopulate.