Major Wildlife Sanctuaries in India

Extinction of wildlife:

The number and type of ecosystems where wildlife can live are reduced as habitats are destroyed. Habitat fragmentation divides large and species-rich wildlife populations into numerous smaller and weaker ones by breaking up a continuous tract of habitat. Habitat loss caused by humans and fragmentation is the leading cause of species drop and extinctions.

Overexploitation is defined as harvesting flora and fauna at an alarming pace, exceeding the species’ recovery ability. While overharvesting is more than often related to it, overexploitation negatively affects a wide range of species, including amphibians, mammals, birds, plants, and reptiles. Overexploitation involves the risk that if many organisms of a particular species are taken, the species has a risk of not flourishing again. Overexploitation often leads to the species becoming endangered.

A wide variety of pollutants hurt biodiversity as well as wildlife living in an ecosystem-

• For several pollutants, short-term exposure is sufficient to cause harm (for example, pesticides, weedicides, etc.).
• Some are exposed to it by inhaling (for example, air pollutants, smoke, harmful gases, etc) or ingesting it (for example, toxic metals, chemicals, etc). 
• Pollutants have different outcomes on different species, so a harmful pollutant to one species may not be harmful to another.

Impacts of biodiversity loss:

Over the last 200 years, the human population has increased significantly and exponentially, to almost more than seven billion people existing today, and it continues to grow and increase rapidly. This means that the planet’s natural resources are consumed and depleted faster than have been ever before by inhabitants of our planet. This expansion and development also compromise the habitats/wildlife and survival of various types of plant vegetation and wildlife worldwide.

Habitat destruction of wildlife often leads to the migration of animals from their native habitat, and often they are not able to survive these migrations. Increasing water levels are flooding the areas like islands, banks of the rivers, etc, increasing temperatures do not suit the animals inhabiting a certain ecosystem. It is also acknowledged that an increasing number of ecosystems containing endangered species are disappearing on earth. 

Humans are to be held responsible for the current climate change that distorts the planet’s environmental and living conditions. It is associated with some previously mentioned wildlife threats, such as habitat destruction and increasing pollution. Some irreversible effects of climate change include alarmingly rising temperatures, melting ice glaciers, changes in precipitation rate, periods of drought, more prolonged heat waves, storm emergence, and sea-level rise. Droughts, heatwaves, severely destructible storms, and rising sea levels all directly impact habitat destruction. Also, species ranges will be impacted by rising temperatures, fluctuating patterns of precipitation, and transitioning weather patterns.

Conservation of wildlife and biodiversity:

The practice of protecting plant and animal species and their habitats is known as wildlife conservation. As a component of the world’s ecosystems, wildlife makes a significant contribution to the balance and stability of nature’s processes. Most of the time, the human population gets immense benefits from wildlife. The goal of wildlife conservation is to ensure that these species survive, which benefits our ecosystem and human population.

Killing (illegal hunting) or capturing animals, in general, is illegal and punishable through laws in all such locations. Wildlife Reserve forests, for example, serve as sanctuaries’ safeguards and suitable living conditions for animals in the wild.  People who live in wildlife preserves are permitted to engage in certain activities such as grazing their livestock and collecting medicinal plants, firewood, etc. 

To resolve these issues, national and international governmental efforts to preserve Earth’s wildlife have been initiated. Numerous nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are dedicated to conservation, including the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, etc.

Wildlife sanctuaries in India:

A wildlife sanctuary is a protected and conservation area where animals and their habitats are safeguarded from human disturbance. Animal capture, killing, and poaching are strictly prohibited in these areas.

There are a total of 448 wildlife sanctuaries in India. The major wildlife sanctuaries are listed below:

• Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary, Rajasthan
• Gir national park and wildlife sanctuary, Gujarat
• Chilka Lake bird sanctuary, Odisha
• Mudumalai Sanctuary, Tamil Nadu
• Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. …
• Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala. …
• Sundarbans National Park in West Bengal. …
• Kaziranga National Park in Assam. …
• Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. …
• Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh. …
• Bandipur National Park in Karnataka.

Conclusion:

Confronted with the differences between conservation and development, many nations presume that conserving their biological richness is impractical and economically unsustainable. Generally, the number of species on the verge of extinction far exceeds the conservation resources available. On a planetary scale, esteemed environmental groups have discussed this problem. They have marked and identified, for maximum protection and care, many ‘biodiversity hotspots’ regions with extremely high levels of species varieties and endemism (species confined to a particular geographical region and usually not found inhabiting anywhere else).