Conservation for the People notes

• In 2004 the World Conservation Union placed three vultures—the long-billed, the slender-billed and the Oriental white-backed — on the critically endangered list.
• For a long time, observers did not know what was causing the vultures’ decline. Some speculated the culprit was habitat loss or pollution. Several years ago researchers discovered that the birds were being killed by an anti-inflammatory drug, diclofenac, commonly administered to cows.
• The cows would take the medicine and then the vultures would eat their dead carcases, because the cows had that anti-inflammatory drug in the system and the vultures ate it then they would become sick, with more dead cows every where wild dogs, and domesticated dogs started to eat the cows, the population of the dogs flourished so much and then more dog spread disease would become common and more people would die from that. DOMINO EFFECT.
• Preserving biodiversity is very important especially in hot spots.
• If we protect the hot spots then we can ensure that people are a priority.
• biodiversity hot spots- small areas that harbor a great variety of endemic, or native and geographically restricted, plant species.
• Only around 30% of people have heard of biodiversity
• harbor life raft ecosystems that are conservation priorities for the people and scientists. Such ecosystems are ones whose conservation and restoration would dramatically improve people’s lives. These countries include India, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Haiti, Guatemala, Liberia, and The Gambia.
• Human health is also threatened when ecosystems and natural cycles break down.
• Almost two million people die every year because of inadequate or unclean water supplies. Conserving wetlands and forests would reduce these deaths
• One quarter of a million people join the planet every day. More forests and wetlands will be cleared for agriculture, and more ocean species will be fished to depletion.
• conservationists should collaborate more closely with development experts.
• In California, the nonnative European honeybee is the most important pollinator from an economic perspective. If the European honeybee population were to become dramatically reduced (and it has recently been threatened by introduced mites), some of the less abundant native bees might increase and fill the vital economic role of crop pollinators.
• The World Bank is also encouraging nations to embrace green accounting methods in which economic assets and national productivity assessments include measures that credit environmental and ecosystem services and subtract degradation that results from pollution or destructive extraction.