World wildlife day

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Happy World Wildlife Day! For those of you who may not know, today’s theme is Big Cats. The cats that are often associated with this category include lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, and pumas, among many others. These remarkable predators suffer from various threats that endanger their lives and populations. A majority of these threats are human-induced, such as poaching and illegal trade of parts, human-wildlife conflict, and loss of habitat due to deforestation and human expansion.

From the World Wildlife Fund’s website I learned the conservation statuses of some of these animals (1):
    Jaguar - Panthera onca - Near Threatened
    Snow Leopard - Panthera uncia - Vulnerable
    Tiger - Panthera tigris - Endangered
    Amur Leopard - Panthera pardus orientalis - Critically Endangered

I further discovered the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s global system for recognizing the conservation status of species (2):
    Least Concern (LC)
    Near Threatened (NT)
    Vulnerable (VU)
    Endangered (EN)
    Critically Endangered (CR)
    Extinct in the Wild (EW)
    Extinct (EX)
As is evident, the conservation status is varied across the board. Ideally, however, all of these creatures would be of Least Concern. So what can be done to help?

Education is the most efficient way to spread the message about the need for wildlife conservation for creatures all across the globe. Researching different trends and threats to animals will allow the education and knowledge necessary to then share the message with others. Areas of importance include the impact that the extinction of an animal would have on its surrounding ecosystem, the role the animal currently plays in its ecosystem, and the ways that the animal’s existence impacts our daily lives. Getting people to care about threatened animals will ultimately encourage their desire to support conservation efforts worldwide.

http://www.wildlifeday.org/about (1)
http://www.iucnredlist.org/ (2)

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Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo

Busch Gardens - Tampa Bay, FL