(Download) "Animal Migration: An Endangered Phenomenon? Timely International Action Can Sustain This Inspiring Natural Process Before It Becomes a Crisis." by Issues in Science and Technology # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Animal Migration: An Endangered Phenomenon? Timely International Action Can Sustain This Inspiring Natural Process Before It Becomes a Crisis.
- Author : Issues in Science and Technology
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Engineering,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 1007 KB
Description
Animal migrations are among the world's most visible and inspiring natural phenomena. Whether it's a farmer in Nebraska who stops his tractor on a cold March morning to watch a flock of sandhill cranes passing overhead or a Maasai pastoralist who climbs a hill in southern Kenya and gazes down on a quarter million wildebeest marching across the savanna, migration touches the lives of most people in one form or another. Although animal migration may be a ubiquitous phenomenon, it is also an increasingly endangered one. In virtually every corner of the globe, migratory animals face a growing array of threats, including habitat destruction, overexploitation, disease, and global climate change. Saving the great migrations will be one of the most difficult conservation challenges of the 21st century. But if we fail to do so, we will pay a heavy price--aesthetically, ecologically, and even economically. The decline of migratory species is by no means a new problem. North America's two greatest migratory phenomena--the flocks of passenger pigeons that literally darkened the skies during their spring and fall journeys in the East and the herds of bison that once stretched from horizon to horizon on the Great Plains--were snuffed out well over a century ago. (The passenger pigeon vanished completely in 1914; bison held on only because of last-minute conservation efforts.) Even as far back as the American Revolution, colonial leaders were alarmed enough about declines in Atlantic salmon to push legislation banning the practice of placing nets across the complete span of a river in order to catch every salmon heading upstream to spawn.