Question

Name three problems that can threaten a community's environmental capital.

Answer 1

Healthy habitats foster safe wildlife. Threats to our environment including invasive species, diseases, emissions, and global warming are placing wildlife habitats at risk.

Climate change is exacerbating many of the environmental problems that we are currently facing. It presents a major long-term challenge that needs our concerted action to avoid its root causes and to cope with its impacts. Pollution from toxic greenhouse gas pollution, in particular carbon dioxide, is the leading cause of climate change. In addition to deforestation, fossil fuel production contributes greatly to greenhouse gas emissions.

Harmful invasive species that threaten the balance of already fragile habitats are second only to habitat destruction due to their systemic threat to native wildlife. The National Wildlife Federation shall encourage the protection, management and eradication of invasive species, as well as the narrowing or closing of pathways for their spread. This includes Asian carp, which poses a significant threat to biodiversity in the Great Lakes eco-system.

Today, about 30 per cent of the world's land is covered by trees, which is around half as much as before agriculture began about 11,000 years ago. Around 7.3 million hectares of forest was lost every year, mainly in the tropics. Tropical forests used to occupy about 15% of the planet's land area; they are now down to 6 or 7%. Most of the remainder has been destroyed by logging or burning.

Globally, population growth and resource use, climate change and global warming, habitat destruction and urbanization, invasive alien species, over-exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation are major hazards.