m14.    What are some solutions for conservation and preservation?

Generally wildlife is managed by manipulating wildlife populations and habitats for their welfare and for human benefit; preserving endangered and threatened species; and by enforcing wildlife laws.

World Conservation Strategy, established in 1987, is a long-range plan for conservation put into affect by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the UN Environmental Programme, and the World Wildlife Fund. The goal is to preserve species diversity and genetic diversity by ensuring any use of species and ecosystem is sustainable. The plan includes women and indigenous peoples in the development of a conservation plan. It promotes an ethic that includes protection of plants and animals as well as people.

The management strategy can be a species approach (protecting endangered species through legislation); an ecosystem approach (preserve balanced ecosystems); or a wildlife management approach (manages game species for sustained yield).

Other solutions are refuges. In 1903, T. Roosevelt established the first US federal wildlife refuge at Pelican Island, Florida.  At about this time John Muir got him to establish the National Park Act.  The first area protected was Yosemite.

Gene banks, botanical gardens, and zoos also are methods of conservation and preservation. Botanists preserve genetic information in gene banks by storing seeds. Zoos and research centers preserve individuals of critically endangered species. Egg pulling, collecting eggs in the wild and hatching them in research centers, and captive breeding of some or all of the critically endangered species are two more methods. The world's zoos contain only 27 endangered species of animals with populations of 107 or more individuals.

e10.    Why do organisms become extinct?  

e11.    What types of old-growth forests are there?