Primate Conservation Paper

Submitted By bsadiku
Words: 579
Pages: 3

Primate Conservation Paper
Our closest living relatives, the primates, are slowly going extinct due to our artificial need for an overabundance of resources. The immediate threats to primates in the wild thus far are human activities that disrupt their natural ecological niches. These threats include: deforestation, habitat fragmentation, hunting, live capture for the pet trade, and unethical biomedical research. Although there have been many group activists and researchers who protest as a way to fix the problem, it is still a huge issue that needed be addressed.
Humans have always played a key role in our changing environment, leaving a blueprint behind as generations have passed. However, humans are now playing a more disastrous role in the environment of other organisms, such as primates which regard the Brazilian maple humans see as future hardwood floors, home. Humans have been disturbing the homes of many primates for years to satisfy a growing demand for resources found in their rainforest habitat (Pyritz et al., 2010). Two main ways they are doing this is through habitat fragmentation and deforestation (Pyritz et al., 2010). Habitat fragmentation, one of the key reasons as to why many primates are going extinct, is the discontinuities in an organism's preferred area of ecological sustainability. It is caused by the forest being broken up into smaller areas due to human interactions (Oklander et al., 2010). When the forest is broken up into smaller bits, it causes isolated population to mix causing interbreeding depression (Oklander et al., 2010). One other immediate threat to primates in the wild is the act or process of removing trees from or clearing a forest, known as deforestation. According to the article, Science Daily, it highlights the impact of deforestation and how it impacts our changing environment, stating “Tropical deforestation also emits 20 percent of total greenhouse gases that cause climate change, which is more than all the world's cars, trucks, trains and airplanes combined. In addition, climate change is altering the habitats of many species, leaving those with small ranges even more vulnerable to extinction.” If humans do not change the way we trade and collaborate, not only with other human beings from different nations, but the