Endangered Animalz

Healthy freshwater systems are precious and essential sources to maintain and enhance the quality of life around the world.

Wetland ecosystems are often mistakenly undervalued. Few people realize the range of products derived from freshwater habitats such as wetlands – food such as fish, rice and cranberries, medicinal plants, peat for fuel and gardens, poles for building materials, and grasses and reeds for making mats and baskets and thatching houses.

Protecting forests means protecting life. Forests provide us with an incredible array of natural resources such as timber products, wood fibre for paper, and medicinal plants. Forests purify the air we breathe. They preserve watersheds, and help improve freshwater supplies. They stabilise soil, preventing erosion and reducing the risk of landslides.

It is estimated that some 1.6 billion people worldwide depend on forests for their livelihoods, with 60 million indigenous people depending on forests for their subsistence. For many others, forests are havens of tranquillity, recreation and inspiration. They are the storehouse of biological diversity, home to two-thirds of all plants and animals. Conserving forests is in our own best interest and vitally important to the health of the whole planet.

Pandas now live on islands. In many senses it is true, and it is why they are under threat of extinction.

A booming Chinese population has filled the valleys between the mountains where the pandas live. Being shy elusive creatures, the pandas cannot get across from one mountain top to another if they are to avoid humans. So if the food runs out on one mountain – they starve.

Global Warming is melting glaciers in every region of the world, putting millions of people at risk from floods, droughts and lack of drinking water. Glaciers are ancient rivers of compressed snow that creep through the landscape, shaping the planet’s surface. They are the Earth’s largest freshwater reservoir, collectively covering an area the size of South America. Glaciers have been retreating worldwide since the end of the Little Ice Age (around 1850), but in recent decades glaciers have begun melting at rates that cannot be explained by historical trends.

Although only a small fraction of the planet’s permanent ice is stored outside of Greenland and Antarctica, these glaciers are extremely important because they respond rapidly to climate change and their loss directly affects human populations and ecosystems. Continued, widespread melting of glaciers during the coming century will lead to floods, water shortages for millions of people, and sea level rise threatening and destroying coastal communities and habitats.

The future for tigers looks brighter today, as we watch leaders from all 13 countries that still have wild tigers sign the Hua Hin Declaration. They pledge to work jointly over the next 10 years to double the number of tigers in the wild — essentially adopting WWF’s Year of the Tiger campaign goal of doubling the wild tiger population by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.

WWF is work with them to achieve this goal, which requires shutting down poaching networks, setting aside habitat, and changing the trajectory of global commodities to conserve high-conservation-value forests that are home to tigers, elephants and other magnificent creatures. They’ve also joined forces with actor and environmentalist (and now WWF Board member) Leonardo DiCaprio to build public and political support to reach these goals through our Save Tigers.

The Arctic region has some of the largest unfragmented areas of wilderness in the world. Most of the boreal forests in northern Canada and the tundra plains of Siberia exist much as they did thousands of years ago. However with the ongoing search for minerals, oil and gas, the Arctic is now becoming the target of large resource extraction projects. Without a sufficient network of protected areas in place, important ecosystems could be lost.

Climate change in the Arctic is expected to be among the greatest of any region on Earth. The Arctic is warming. Air temperatures in the region have on average increased by about 5°C over the last 100 years. A slight shift in temperature, bringing averages above the freezing point, will completely alter the character of the Arctic. Where once ice covered the seas and permafrost stabilized the ground, open water and large tracts of marshy tundra will dominate. The consequences for northern people and all Arctic species will be severe.