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Chapter 12
Wild Living Resources:
Plentiful and Endangered
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
There are many important reasons
for preserving wildlife species and limiting both natural and human-induced
risk to them. Much can be done to improve the ways in which we go
about the conservation of species. This section should reinforce
your understanding of the following:
- The major current causes of extinction.
- The utilitarian, ecological, aesthetic, and
moral reasons for conserving wildlife and endangered species.
- The traits shared by species likely to become
endangered through human activities.
- The risk factors for extinction, the human
effect on extinction through history, and why modern technological civilization
and the large number of people have greatly in increased the rate of extinction.
- The concepts and terms related to conservation,
such as carrying capacity, maximum sustainable yield, minimum viable populations
size, and minimum viable habitat.
- The differences between the goals and emphasis
of modern wildlife management and those of traditional wildlife management.
- The necessary components of successful wildlife
management.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE - Should
Wolves Be Hunted in Alaska?
A wildlife
management program in Alaska allows the public to hunt wolves in order
to increase caribou herd populations for the purposes of ecotourism.
If wolves are an important part of the ecosystem of Alaska, and given that
wolves are extinct or endangered in all but two states (Montana and Alaska),
how can environmental science be used to justify control of the natural
population growth of this endangered species? This section expands
on the introduction provided in the text of this controversial issue.
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Supplement to text book Environmental Science - Earth As a Living Planet,
by Daniel Botkin and Edward Keller. Copyright © John Wiley & Sons,
Inc. 1997
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