Pollution is among the most insidious threats to animal extinction. It can be as obvious as sewage and oil spills in water or as invisible as chemicals used every day. Whether the effect is long term or immediate, the results are the same. Water is the source of life. The water in lakes, rivers and oceans is essential …show more content…
Ninety nine percent of currently threatened species are at risk due to human activities such as hunting and taking animal body parts. Hunting can be in many forms, such as shooting and trapping. Trapping is when endangered animal are taken into captivity; it is illegal and can lead to their extinction. Trapping is very popular and is used to hunt beavers, coyotes, muskrats, and even fox. These innocent animals are trying to thrive for survival and trapping to kill them for their fur is making their population go down ("Connect.", www.endangered.org). Many species have been hunted to extinction or to the point where they are critically endangered. There were millions of bison in the great plains of North America; hunting was so intense that only a few hundred were left by the time the animals became protected. Besides for food, animals are also hunted down for their body parts, such as their fur or feathers, skins and horns. One example is the African elephant that is heavily hunted for its ivory tusks. Hunters are killing the righteous animals, cutting off their tusks and leaving the elephants there to rot and die, just to get money from merchants. The population went from many millions to a few hundred thousand. Today, elephants are protected, but poachers still find ways to kill them for their tusks ("How Animals Become Extinct.",