Environment: Fascinating Photos

Credit: Kurt Ackermann Because our cities, towns and rural areas are spreading, mankind has squeezed animal populations out of their habitats. Many species have already gone extinct—meaning they no long exist. Species fill a particular niche in the ecosystem. When they vanish their entire habitat suffers. Mountain gorillas like these are endangered—threatened with extinction—both because of their shrinking habitat in Central Africa and the poachers who kill them for meat.

Credit: Bernard Landgraf No place is safe. Even animals that live in the remotest parts of the world are in danger of disappearing. Rarely seen snow leopards are uniquely adapted to live in the Himalayan Mountains. Scientists believe there are only 6,500 left in the wild.

Credit: Sklmsta Size doesn’t matter either. The largest animal in the world, the blue whale, is in danger of disappearing. These amazing creatures reach 27 meters long—the equivalent of a seven-story building. They’ve been hunted since in the 1800s to near-extinction. World governments instated a hunting ban in the 1960s, but the population is only a small fraction of the 300,000 that once existed.

Credit: Fisherman Tuna is not just under stress from our fishing fleets. They’ve become contaminated with mercury from our industrial runoff, so much so that the US government recommends pregnant woman stop eating it.

Credit: Amir Jacobi The confrontation between farmers and the Asian elephant is sad example of what happens when farms encroach on wild habitat. In the last 20 years, the elephants of India, have stomped and killed some 4,000 people. Retaliatory killings have decimated elephant populations in 13 countries.

Credit: cliff1066 Giant pandas live on bamboo in the mountains of China. Because their low numbers in the wild, zookeepers have struggled to mate pandas in captivity. In 2009, the first baby was born from artificial insemination.

Credit: Phil P Harris The Amazon rainforest has the richest diversity of species in the world. Rainforests like this once covered 14 percent of the world’s land. That number has dropped to six percent.

Credit: KCO3 Because of disappearing rainforest, creatures like the Amazonian manatee are disappearing too. These freshwater animals live in rivers that feed into the Amazon River, the longest river in the world.

Credit: TimVickers The addax is among the world's rarest creatures. It lives in the dry Sahara Desert, and gets its water from the moisture of the plants it eats. It was almost hunted out of existence for its meat and hide. There are less than 600 left in the wild.

By Tambako the Jaguar King among animals, even the lion is in danger of disappearing. Recently, conservation organizations have successfully enlisted tribes that were known for hunting lions, like the Maasai, to protect the species.

By ucumari Global warming is changing the environment for all animals, but especially the polar bear. The ice on which it lives in the arctic is melting. The species has been forced to survive in a narrow band of habitat in which it has increasingly come in conflict with man and other bear species.

Photo Credit: rsvstks Oil drilling rigs may provide energy, but when they are located in oceans and a spill occurs, it endangers wildlife and threatens the environment.

The Love Canal exemplifies how humans can endanger the environment and create hazardous living conditions. Hooker Chemical buried 21,000 tons of toxic waste in the ground in Niagara, Falls, New York. The toxic waste contaminated the land and so it become unsafe for humans to live there.