The impacts of global warming – changes in precipitation, temperature, sea level, and polar ice – are affecting plants and animals around the world.  There is no longer any question “if global warming is occurring” – it is. 

Scientists from around the world have documented it’s pervasive influence and have shown that human activity – burning fossil fuel in our cars and coal in our power plants to generate electricity, and cutting down forests or draining wetlands – are clearly the major causes for its increase.  The question now is: “What can we do to minimize its impacts?”

The International Program at Defenders of Wildlife focuses our scientific, legal and policy expertise on the following goals:

• protecting global biodiversity
• stopping global warming
• reforming the wildlife trade
• stemming the global amphibian decline
• blocking imports of harmful non-native species into the United States

Defenders advocates in numerous international forums including the:

• Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
• Convention on Biological Diversity
• Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles

The International Program also advocates to Congress and the Administration on U.S. involvement in a wide variety of conservation efforts, ranging from funding for foreign species conservation to combating illegal logging to restricting imports of tuna caught with fishing methods that endanger dolphins.

Success Stories

 

 

 

 

 

Habitat loss is the largest threat to biodiversity in the U.S. and around the world. With an estimated 6,000 acres of open space lost each day in the U.S., habitat loss is more prevalent and negatively affects more species than ever before due to increased sources of stress such as pesticides, invasive species, logging, climate change, and more. The result: wildlife is simply running out of space.

 

Invasive species are plants, animals, and microbes that are out of place and out of control. Nearly half of the species currently listed under the Endangered Species Act are threatened by invasive species. After habitat loss and global warming, invasives are considered the third most serious threat to biological diversity.

 

Overexploitation of natural resources, through unsustainable hunting, fishing, or extraction of raw material, can result in the extinction of species and the loss of genetic diversity within others. Sustainable use of natural resources is essential to the conservation of wildlife and habitat.