Wildlife

Wildlife typically refers to vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) — especially game animals — that live in an undomesticated environment. Sometimes the term “wildlife” is extended to include invertebrate animals, plants, and fungi or to mean all of the organisms in a particular wild habitat.

• The beaver had already disappeared from English rivers by the Conquest, and the wolf had almost gone; one was killed in Surrey in 1212, and there are a few scattered mentions from the remainder of the century; a few may have continued on the North York Moors until the end of the fourteenth century. The rabbit was first introduced into England at the beginning of the twelfth century, and by the 1160s was probably familiar over much of the country. The raucous cough of that bird beloved of poachers, the pheasant, seems to have part of the English woodlands' sound-scene from about the same time: the species was certainly present by 1170.
  • Patrick H. Armstrong, The English Parson-naturalist: A Companionship Between Science and Religion. Gracewing Publishing. 2000. p. 25. ISBN 9780852445167. 

• The expanding human population has outright destroyed habitats, and where it did not, it altered them drastically to the detriment of wildlife and often people themselves. Over the last century, the more the population grew, the more greenhouse gases flowed into the atmosphere, and the greater the impact on wildlife were, all of which required specific temperature ranges other limited climatic conditions. And the more people there are, the more cities, roads, farm fields, fences, and other barriers there are preventing wildlife from living in or moving to areas of more favorable temperature or humidity in a rapidly changing climate.
  • Paul R. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos, and Rodolfo Dirzo, Before They Vanish: Saving Nature's Populations — and Ourselves. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2024. p. 169. ISBN 9781421449692.  (392 pages; preface by Jared Diamond)

• In many of the countries of West and Central Africa, the people love "bushmeat". In the old days a hunter would shoot or trap animals just to feed his own family, perhaps his village. But now he kills as many as many as he can, cuts them up, dries of smokes the meat, and then sends it on a truck to the towns. It is not legal to hunt chimpanzees; they are endangered. But how does anyone know what the animal was when it has been cut into small pieces? Thousands of animals are killed for the bushmeat trade each year.
  The only hope for the wild animal populations in these countries is that, because animals are disappearing fast, they are harder to find and kill. The hunters complain that they have to travel farther and farther into the forest to catch anything at all. And so, if programs for breeding domestic animals can be introduced, at lest some of the remaining wildlife will have a chance.
  • Jane Goodall, My Life with the Chimpanzees (revised ed.). Simon & Schuster. 1996. p. 126. ISBN 9780671562717.  (160 pages; 1st edition 1988)

• A flock of a dozen chickadees spends the year in my woods. In winter, when we are harvesting diseased or dead trees for our fuel wood, the ring of the axe is dinner gong fro the chickadee tribe. ...
  But for diseases and insect pests, there would likely be no food in the trees, and hence no chickadees to add cheer to my woods in winter.
  Many other kinds of wildlife depend on tree diseases. My pileated woodpeckers chisel living plants, to extract fat grubs from the diseased heartwood. My barred owls find surcease from crows and jays in the hollow heart of an old basswood; but for this diseased tree their sundown serenade would probably be silenced. My wood ducks nest in hollow trees; every June brings its broad of downy ducklings to my woodland slough. All squirrels depend, for permanent dens, on a delicately balanced equilibrium between a rotting cavity and the scar tissue with which the tree attempts to close the wound. The squirrels referee the contest by gnawing out the scar tissue when it begins unduly to shrink the amplitude of their front door.
  • Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press. 2001. ISBN 9780199726523.  (quote from p. 134 & p. 137; photographs by Michael Sewell; introduction by Kenneth Brower; 1st edition 1949)