Ever since the beginning of humans, they have always had an effect on their surrounding environment. This effect can always be negative or positive on the species and biodiversity around them.
Negative Human Effects
As humans begin to develop more, they use up more resources and participate more in the activities of the environment around them. These human interventions have negative risks and positive benefits towards the family and habitats of the Felidae family. These are some ways humans are negatively affecting the environment around them and are harming the biodiversity of the feildae family in specific.
First, humans significantly reduce population size and throw off the balance of various ecological niches. For instance, the humans have hunted the Cheetah’s to near extinction within the past century, causing a bottleneck effect reducing the genetic diversity within the cheetah species. After realizing the effects of their over predation, people began to help the breeding of the Cheetahs to grow its population. Although, this hunting has significantly reduced the size of the Cheetah’s gene pool. Therefore, even when the Cheetahs reproduce their genetic diversity is much lower than before causing the offspring to be very similar to the parents and lacking uniqueness. So if another disaster strikes the Cheetah population it will affect them all equally meaning if it threatens them, there will be a much greater rate of mortality as none are adapted differently to survive that disaster. |
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Second, human expansion is causing a lot of deforestation and destruction of habitats of many of the felidae. This common urban expansion of humans will destroy many habitats that directly and indirectly have a devastating effect on the felidae populations. For instance, cutting down forests will take away the higher vantage points used by the Canadian Lynx in order to stalk and pounce on prey. The lynx will be left with difficulties to catch prey as its not adapted to running properly to chase the prey, therefore it will begin to lack proper resources. As a result the lynx will either migrate to another habitat and have trouble adapting or it will begin to significantly decrease in population. These are a few ways that humans are using the environment for their benefit but not considering the risks for the inhabitants of the environment. With humans exploiting natural resources and searching for land, the felidae will not have the proper resources to survive and will leave gaps in their ecological niche as their numbers drop.
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Beneficial Human Effects
Although there seems to be a great number of negative effects caused by humans, there are still benefits of human interventions. Humans are now taking responsibilities towards helping the felidae biodiversity and improving their chances of survival. A common conservation idea is to close off the wild areas in which the felidae species live. This will reduce the amount of hunting in that area while still maintaining a vast portion of their natural environment rather than keeping them in small cages. For example the Felidae Conservation Fund, founded in California in 2006, is determined to preserve the natural environment of wild cats. They collaborate and research the effects of human intervention and bring up ideas to diminish these negative effects. One other helpful foundation is the Cheetah Conservation Fund that is out to help and improve the scar that the ice age and human hunting has left on the diversity of Cheetah species. They search for Cheetahs to mate with others to be able to bring some variation into the species which will hopefully increase into greater variations.
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Another way in which humans can help the felidae family is through their capability to conduct research and discover more about the family’s behaviour. This includes finding its evolutionary background and researching different illnesses that may have very harmful effects on the organisms. They can then use their knowledge in order to understand more about the needs of felids and assist them through health support and providing the proper living conditions that may be hard for them to find themselves. In conclusion, humans have positive and negative effects on the environment and biodiversity of the Felidae family. Over the years humans have been using their power poorly and have destroyed much of their wildlife. Now, with the help of their new technology they are doing their best to undo their harmful effects on this family of organisms. Although they can never fully recover what once was, humans are doing their best to ensure the success of the Felidae family.