World Conservation Issues - Page 26

Once again, sea otters are helping to demonstrate that the conservation of one species can have significant benefits to many others.

This species is restricted to riparian areas in Russia, China, Japan and possibly North Korea, and it now has been revealed that they are a key indicator of the health of the primary forests in which they live.

Almost 100 million Euros has been spent on conserving the remaining Iberian Lynx in the wild, and it seems that these efforts have paid off.

With only approximately 6,000 snow leopards left in the wild, time is running out.

On average, the rate of loss of populations of all amphibians in the USA is 3.7% per year. The scientists believe that if this rate does not change, these species will disappear from half of the habitats that they currently occupy in around 20 years.

Conservationists believe that this is down to efforts by Chinese park officials and provincial governments. The Qinghai provincial government, for example, recently launched several conservation-related policies and region-wide projects that aim to build a foundation for wildlife conservation.

Through rewildling, a conservation measure that is becoming more popular across the globe, bison are now being returned to the wild, where they once lived, back where they belong.

As well as hunting, their populations have fallen due to an increase in the practice by local farmers of releasing cattle indiscriminately into national parkland for retrieval later in the year, which has damaged their habitat.

Despite being listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1992, conservation efforts haven’t come close to increasing their population, and haven’t even been able to halt their decline.