Stories

Habitat restoration is accomplished through management, protection, and reestablishment of plants by returning abiotic factors (e.g., soil chemistry, water content, disturbance) and biotic factors (e.g., species composition, interactions among species) to historical levels.

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Wildlife Restoration

Forest restoration is defined as “actions to re-instate ecological processes, which accelerate recovery of forest structure, ecological functioning and biodiversity levels towards those typical of climax forest” i.e. the end-stage of natural forest succession.

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Forest Restoration

With the world industry and urbanisation growing, there is little to no land left for wildlife to roam free in their natural habitats. This has caused a lot of conflict between the two, with wildlife losing the fight most of the time.

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Human-Animal Conflict

Over-harvesting of animals and plants is the harm caused by overexploitation of species. For example, overfishing does not only affect individual fishing communities and threaten certain fish species, but causes imbalances in the whole marine system. As human life depends on the existence of a functioning planet Earth, careful and thoughtful use of wildlife species and their habitats is required to avoid not only extinctions, but serious disturbances to the complex web of life.

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Overexploitation

Illegal wildlife trade involves the exchange or sale of wild animals or plant resources. This can include live animals and plants, animal body parts such as skins, scales and feathers, and any product made from or including a wild animal or plant. It is devastating wildlife species across the globe and thus negatively impacting various areas of life. This illicit trade is considered as a large business operated by dangerous international networks and is trafficked much like illegal drugs and arms. Due to its very nature, it is extremely challenging to obtain accurate reporting for the value of the illegal wildlife trade. TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network estimates that it runs into billions of dollars.

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Illegal Wildlife Trade

Hundreds of thousands of wild animals are kept in captivity in zoos, safari parks and marine parks throughout the world, many living in the most appalling conditions, with no enrichment or stimulation, causing both physical and psychological suffering. Change For Animals Foundation maintains that the keeping of wildlife in captivity for the purposes of entertainment is not ethically justifiable, and is committed to raising awareness of the plight of these animals, whilst lobbying for the strengthening of laws to safeguard the welfare of wildlife in captivity.

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Wildlife in Captivity

It’s easy to throw something in a trash can. We don’t usually think about our local landfills unless complaining about the smell when we drive by them, but the average person generates 4.6 pounds of trash per day. This trash ends up in two places. It’s in landfills or it ends up in environmental habitats and the ocean. Waste disposal poses a threat to not only the Earth and its environment but humans as well. When waste is in the ocean, the ocean dwellers mistake it for food or get tangled up in it. When waste is disposed of via burning or nuclear, it emits hazardous toxins in the air, which people breathe in. People can limit this crisis by reducing the amount of waste. By choosing to use products that can be recycled or placed in a compost pile, every household can reduce their waste.

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Waste Disposal

Human population continues to grow rapidly worldwide. Humanity entered the 20th century with 1.6 billion people; right now, we're about 7.5 billion. Estimates put us at nearly 10 billion by 2050. Growing global populations, combined with growing affluence, is putting ever greater pressure on essential natural resources, like water. Most of the growth is happening on the African continent, and in southern and eastern Asia.

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Overpopulation

Overgrazing, monoculture planting, erosion, soil compaction, overexposure to pollutants, land-use conversion - there's a long list of ways that soils are being damaged. About 12 million hectares of farmland a year get seriously degraded, according to UN estimates.

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Soil Degradation

On land, wild animals are being hunted to extinction for bushmeat, ivory, or "medicinal" products. At sea, huge industrial fishing boats equipped with bottom-trawling or purse-seine nets clean out entire fish populations. The loss and destruction of habitat are also major factors contributing to a wave of extinction - unprecedented in that it is caused by a single species: humans. The IUCN's Red List of threatened and endangered species continues to grow. Not only do species inherently deserve to exist, they also provide products and "services" essential to human survival. Think bees and their pollinating prowess - necessary for growing food.

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Deforestation

Overloading of the atmosphere and of ocean waters with carbon. Atmospheric CO2 absorbs and re-emits infrared-wavelength radiation, leading to warmer air, soils, and ocean surface waters - which is good: The planet would be frozen solid without this. Unfortunately, there's now too much carbon in the air. Burning of fossil fuels, deforestation for agriculture, and industrial activities have pushed up atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 280 parts per million (ppm) 200 years ago, to about 400 ppm today. That's an unprecedented rise, in both size and speed. The result: climate disruption.

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Air Pollution

Environmental degradation is the disintegration of the earth or deterioration of the environment through the consumption of assets, for example, air, water and soil; the destruction of environments and the eradication of wildlife. It is characterized as any change or aggravation to nature’s turf seen to be pernicious or undesirable.

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Environmental Degradation

Pollution is the introduction of harmful materials into the environment. These harmful materials are called pollutants. Pollutants can be natural, such as volcanic ash. They can also be created by human activity, such as trash or runoff produced by factories. Pollutants damage the quality of air, water, and land.

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Pollution

Species-rich wild forests are being destroyed, especially in the tropics, often to make way for cattle ranching, soybean or palm oil plantations, or other agricultural monocultures. Today, about 30 percent of the planet's land area is covered by forests - which is about half as much as before agriculture got started around 11,000 years ago. About 7.3 million hectares (18 million acres) of forest are destroyed each year, mostly in the tropics. Tropical forests used to cover about 15 percent of the planet's land area; they're now down to 6 or 7 percent. Much of this remainder has been degraded by logging or burning. Not only do natural forests act as biodiversity reserves, they are also carbon sinks, keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and oceans.

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Resource Depletion

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Climate Change

Incidental killing of non-target species, such as dolphins and seabirds, when they are caught in fishing gear. It is estimated that over a quarter of the global marine fisheries catch is incidental, unwanted, and discarded. Incidental killing of animals also happens on land when crude traps are set (for example, for musk deer or duikers). These cause damage and death to a variety of animals besides the intended ones.

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Incidental Killings

"Animal poaching" is when an animal is killed illegally. It usually occurs when an animal possesses something that is considered valuable (i.e. the animal’s fur or ivory).

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Animal Poaching

Marriage induced through force, coercion, or deceit is a global phenomenon engendered by cultural and societal norms about the institution of marriage and the roles of spouses. Forced marriage is one entered into without full consent and under duress, where the individual has no right to choose a partner or ability to say no. Around the world, forced or coerced marriages are used by parents and families as a means to many ends, but most commonly to settle debt, receive dowry payments, further economic interests, relieve poverty, obtain residency permits, display status, provide inheritance, counteract promiscuity, and serve as compensation for a wrongful death. Forced marriages render the forced party (in most cases a woman) vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by her spouse or his family, who exercise significantly greater power and control. This can trap the victim in conditions of enslavement, particularly in domestic or sexual servitude.

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Forced, Temporary and Child Marriage

Trafficking in organs is a crime that occurs in three broad categories. Firstly, there are cases where traffickers force or deceive the victims into giving up an organ. Secondly, there are cases where victims formally or informally agree to sell an organ and are cheated because they are not paid for the organ or are paid less than the promised price. Thirdly, vulnerable persons are treated for an ailment, which may or may not exist and thereupon organs are removed without the victim’s knowledge. The vulnerable categories of persons include migrants, especially migrant workers, homeless persons, illiterate persons, etc. It is known that trafficking for organ trade could occur with persons of any age. Commonly traded organs include kidneys, liver and the like; any organ that can be removed and used, could be the subject of such illegal trade.[i] Trafficking in organ trade is an organized crime, involving a host of offenders. The recruiter who identifies the vulnerable person, the transporter, the staff of the hospital/ clinic and other medical centers, the medical professionals, the middlemen and contractors, the buyers, the banks where organs are stored are all involved in the trade.[ii]

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Organ Trafficking

According to UNICEF, as many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade. International covenants and protocols obligate criminalization of the commercial sexual exploitation of children. The use of children in the commercial sex trade is prohibited under both U.S. law and the Palermo Protocol as well as by legislation in countries around the world. There can be no exceptions and no cultural or socioeconomic rationalizations preventing the rescue of children from sexual servitude. Sex trafficking has devastating consequences for minors, including long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unintended pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death.

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Child Sex Trafficking

Child soldiering can be a manifestation of human trafficking where it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of childrenthrough force, fraud, or coercionas combatants, or for labor or sexual exploitation by armed forces. Perpetrators may be government forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made unlawfully to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls can be forced to marry or have sex with male combatants. Both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused and are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

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Child Soldiers

Most international organizations and national laws recognize that children may legally engage in certain forms of work. There is a growing consensus, however, that the worst forms of child labor should be eradicated. The sale and trafficking of children and their entrapment in bonded and forced labor are among these worst forms of child labor. A child can be a victim of human trafficking regardless of the location of that exploitation. Indicators of forced labor of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who has the child perform work that financially benefits someone outside the childs family and does not offer the child the option of leaving. Anti-trafficking responses should supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labor, such as remediation and education. However, when children are enslaved, their abusers should not escape criminal punishment by virtue of longstanding patters of limited responses to child labor practices rather than more effective law enforcement action.

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Forced Child Labor

A unique form of forced labor is the involuntary servitude of domestic workers, whose workplace is informal, connected to their off-duty living quarters, and not often shared with other workers. Such an environment, which often socially isolates domestic workers, is conducive to nonconsensual exploitation since authorities cannot inspect private property as easily as formal workplaces. Investigators and service providers report many cases of untreated illnesses and, tragically, widespread sexual abuse, which in some cases may be symptoms of a situation of involuntary servitude. Ongoing international efforts seek to ensure that not only that administrative remedies are enforced but also that criminal penalties are enacted against those who hold others in involuntary domestic servitude.

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Involuntary Domestic Servitude

Abuses of contracts and hazardous conditions of employment for migrant laborers do not necessarily constitute human trafficking. However, the burden of illegal costs and debts on these laborers in the source country, often with the support of labor agencies and employers in the destination country, can contribute to a situation of debt bondage. This is often exacerbated when the workers status in the country is tied to the employer in the context of employment-based temporary work programs and there is no effective redress for abuse.

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Debt Bondage Among Migrant Laborers

One form of coercion is the use of a bond, or debt. Often referred to as bonded labor or debt bondage, the practice has long been prohibited under U.S. law by its Spanish name, peonage, and the Palermo Protocol calls for its criminalization as a form of trafficking in persons. Workers around the world fall victim to debt bondage when traffickers or recruiters unlawfully exploit an initial debt the worker assumed as part of the terms of employment. Workers may also inherit intergenerational debt in more traditional systems of bonded labor.

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Bonded Labor

When an adult is coerced, forced, or deceived into prostitution or maintained in prostitution through coercion that person is a victim of trafficking. All of those involved in recruiting, transporting, harboring, receiving, or obtaining the person for that purpose have committed a trafficking crime. Sex trafficking can also occur within debt bondage, as women and girls are forced to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful debt purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their crude sale, which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free. It is critical to understand that a persons initial consent to participate in prostitution is not legally determinative; if an individual is thereafter held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, that person is a trafficking victim and should receive the benefits outlined in the United Nations Palermo Protocol and applicable laws.

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Sex Trafficking

Also known as involuntary servitude, forced labor may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or even cultural acceptance of the practice. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.

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Forced Labor

Environmental Conservation