Picture: Heather Cudworth
The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards has announced its 2026 finalists, showcasing the humorous and unexpected side of the natural world through wildlife photography and video. This year’s competition attracted more than 10 000 entries from 112 countries, with images capturing everything from playful antics to unusual animal encounters. Founded in 2015, the awards use humour to encourage greater appreciation of wildlife and raise awareness of conservation. The overall and category winners will be announced in London on 8 December 2026………..Continue reading…
By Michel Bega
Source: The Citizen
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Critics:
Wildlife conservation refers to the practice of protecting wild species and their habitats in order to maintain healthy wildlife species or populations and to restore, protect or enhance natural ecosystems. Major threats to wildlife include habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation, overexploitation, poaching, pollution, climate change, and the illegal wildlife trade. The IUCN estimates that 42,100 species of the ones assessed are at risk for extinction.
Expanding to all existing species, a 2019 UN report on biodiversity put this estimate even higher at a million species. It is also being acknowledged that an increasing number of ecosystems on Earth containing endangered species are disappearing. To address these issues, there have been both national and international governmental efforts to preserve Earth’s wildlife. Prominent conservation agreements include the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
There are also numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) dedicated to conservation such as the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International. The illegal wildlife trade is the illegal trading of plants and wildlife. This illegal trading is worth an estimate of 7-23 billion and an annual trade of around 100 million plants and animals. In 2021 it was found that this trade has caused a 60% decline in species abundance, and 80% for endangered species.
This trade can be devastating to both humans and animals. It has the capacity to spread zoonotic diseases to humans, as well as contribute to local extinction. The pathogens to humans may be spread through small animal vectors like ticks, or through ingestion of food and water. Extinction can be caused due to non-native species being introduced that become invasive. An example of how this may happen is through by-catch.These new species will outcompete the native species and take over, therefore causing the local or global extinction of a species.
Due to the fittest animals in the species being hunted or poached, the less fit organisms will mate, causing less fitness in the generations to come. In addition to species fitness being lowered and therefore endangering species, the illegal wildlife trade has ecological costs. Sex-ratio balances may be tipped or reproduction rates are slowed, which can be detrimental to vulnerable species. The recovery of these populations may take longer due to the reproduction rates being slower.
The wildlife trade also causes issues for natural resources that people use in their everyday lives. Ecotourism is how some people bring in money to their homes, and with depleting the wildlife, this may be a factor in taking away jobs. Illegal wildlife trade has also become normalized through various social media outlets. There are TikTok accounts that have gone viral for their depiction of exotic pets, such as various monkey and bird species. These accounts show a cute and fun side of owning exotic pets, therefore indirectly encouraging illegal wildlife trade.
On March 30, 2021, TikTik joined the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online. They, along with other big social media companies work to protect species from illegal, harmful trade online. Research has shown that machine learning can filter through social media posts to identify indications of illegal wildlife trade. This filtration system is able to search for keywords, pictures, and phrases that indicate illegal wildlife trade, and report it.
It is estimated that, because of human activities, current species extinction rates are about 1000 times greater than the background extinction rate (the ‘normal’ extinction rate that occurs without additional influence). According to the IUCN, out of all species assessed, over 42,100 are at risk of extinction and should be under conservation. Of these, 25% are mammals, 14% are birds, and 40% are amphibians.
However, because not all species have been assessed, these numbers could be even higher. A 2019 UN report assessing global biodiversity extrapolated IUCN data to all species and estimated that 1 million species worldwide could face extinction. Conservation of a select species are often prioritized on several factors which include significant economic and ecological value, as well as desirability or attractiveness. Yet, because resources are limited, sometimes it is not possible to give all species that need conservation due consideration.
The species problem occurring in some cases due to natural hybridization, cryptic species, and natural evolution of species can be represented for species conservation by different approaches, such as multicriteria species approaches, subspecies, evolutionarily significant units, distinct population segments or species-population continuum.Habitat conservation is the practice of protecting a habitat in order to protect the species within it.
This is sometimes preferable to focusing on a single species especially if the species in question has very specific habitat requirements or lives in a habitat with many other endangered species. The latter is often true of species living in biodiversity hotspots, which are areas of the world with an exceptionally high concentration of endemic species (species found nowhere else in the world).
Many of these hotspots are in the tropics, mainly tropical forests like the Amazon. Habitat conservation is usually carried out by setting aside protected areas like national parks or nature reserves. Even when an area isn’t made into a park or reserve, it can still be monitored and maintained.
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