Wildlife Week is celebrated all over the country in the month of October from 2nd to 8th October every year with the view to preserve the fauna means the animal life of the India. It was first started in the year 1952 with the great vision of saving the life of the Indian animals by taking some critical steps. Dr Kirti Dua, Incharge Centre for Wild life Studies and Professor Veterinary Medicine, GADVASU explained that India is a rich mega-diverse country and despite the fact it has only 2.4% of the land mass, it holds more than 7% of the wild life of the planet. Due to intense land pressure, population explosion and increased exploitation of the natural resources, the natural habitat of the wild animal is shrinking rapidly. So destruction of habitat, poaching and human wildlife conflict are the major reasons for the rapid decline in the wild life. In the last 150 years, we have lost nearly lost 93% of our tiger population and now are left just over 2000 tigers in the country. Home sparrows which were very common have become uncommon. In the plains of North India, there was thousands of blackbuck which are now restricted to few hindered at Abhohar Wild life Sanctuary. At the moment there is around 1000 species of flora and fauna in the country are threatened and this figure has increased nearly 50% in the last decade. India is ranked as fourth largest number of threatened species in the world, 31 of them endemic to the region.
The theme for World Wildlife Day 2019 is ‘Life below Water: for People and Planet. This is the first World Wildlife Day to focus on life below water. The ocean contains nearly 200,000 identified species, but actual numbers may be in the millions. Globally, the market value of marine and coastal resources and industries is estimated at US$3 trillion per year, about 5% of global GDP. Over three billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods. The capacity of life below water to provide these services is severely impacted, as our planet’s oceans and the species that live within it are under assault from an onslaught of threats.
Dr Dua emphasized that the main objectives of celebrating wildlife week is to make people more aware of the conservation and protection of the wild life, focus the people’s attention towards the importance of conservation of the wild life, to implement more services to preserve the wild life and to discuss all the issues related to the preservation of the wild life. He further added that this can be a very good platform to to create awareness in the society for wildlife conservation so that our generations to come also cherish the beauty of the nature. Now we are left only with two options- Save the wild life to cherish or leave it to perish.
