Wildlife Protection In America
How many wild animals live in North America? How many are endangered? What about their habitats? Are they still there? How many come back to a destroyed home after migration, or are hunted while enjoying their lives? Is this situation getting worse or better? I believe that not only is it getting worse but we are not doing enough to make it better. There are a few things we could do to change this and make it better before it’s too late. We can expand the percentage of our national budget spent on wildlife conservation, the practice of protecting wild plant and animal species and their habitat. Then, we can expand the size of preserved land, such as national parks and forest. Finally, we can better enforce hunting laws and regulations. This will all lead to more wildlife and more habitats for them to stay in.
There are also a few arguments against wildlife preservation that I plan to explore.The tax chart for 2017 has environment, and energy getting a whopping 4% of the budget. This is less than fifty billion dollars. This just gets worse as the proposed tax chart for 2019 has it categorized at 2% which is well below thirty billion dollars. With so little money going through it is hard to attract people to help. We can’t afford to pay for law enforcement to protect the wildlife, and lands. Most people , including scientist, in this field make less than 60 thousand/year.The lack of help and care allows people to think that they can do what they want, even on protected lands. One of the leading causes for endangered species would be lack of habitat. Other causes include competition, resources and being hunted. With a higher budget we are able to pay for more help we can expand the amount of land that is protected. The more land that we protect the more habitats we can save for endangered animals. More national parks can also bring more money for the communities.
One example of this is Yosemite National Park in California. In 2011 National Park Service (NPS) shows that Yosemite brought in over 379 million dollars, which helped support over five thousand local jobs. This data shows that national parks bring in money, jobs, tourism, and helps the wildlife. Next, we can enforce some laws. The unprotected and decreasing wildlife gets hunted by poachers and sold through the black market for their meat, fur, hide, tusks. Sometimes the animals get hunted for sport, or captured alive and sold of to billionaires that think they are above the law. Without the proper enforcement of the law we will not be able stop the poachers until the animals are extinct. This has happened in many cases, even in North America. Endangered species that are hunted in North America include: reindeer, wild boar, elk, cougar, bear, wolf and moose. To save these animals, we must be more strict on our hunting laws. This includes having harsher punishments and better investigations on finding, or catching these hunters before they claim another animals life. It would also help if we had more game wardens.
In the U.S., there are approximately eight thousand wardens, which is not nearly enough to monitor the North American wildlands. Some people make a living in the world by cutting down trees, hunting, and processing wild animals. Their job is essential in the world to supply meat, and population control, but this leads to some, that are greedy for wealth, hunting animals that should not be hunted. They might argue that protected lands would be putting them out of a job or even criminalising them. There are other ways to make a living in that field. You could farm animals, not to mention you’ll never run out of trees. If your hunting land is protected you should petition for a permit, or hunt somewhere else. If you were getting trees from this land you should just simply move on to another forest.
The simple truth is that more protected lands leads to more jobs not less. Others may say that to much involvement by the the government just makes things worse. Within some of our preserved lands are valuable resources that we could tap into. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or (ANWR) in Alaska , has mass amounts of oil that the U.S. could pump. This would massively lower the price of oil in the United States. It leaves the question of preserved lands or cheaper gas. Many would prefer cheaper gas over saving wildlife, but in the long run gas will always run out but we have a chance to save the animals and their habitat if we are not willing to sacrifice just a little for their cause.
To sum it up, more money equals more help, and more help equals more land and better law enforcement, and all of that equals better communities, more jobs, and more wildlife. These are just some of the ways that we can improve our wildlife conservation program here in America. If these ideas were to be followed through we could be looking at a whole lot smaller endangered list. One way you could make this happen is by donating to one of many wildlife preservation organizations. You can adopt endangered, or injured, animals and raise them, or even visiting zoos, and parks. Even things as littles as recycling, or not buying products that are made from endangered animals, such as tusk decorations. Another way is telling others or organizing awareness events, charities, volunteering, or even just talking about it to others. Hopefully this information will help guide the decisions that you and others make in the future, and that overtime these decisions will lead to a better America, or maybe even a great America.
