by James Johnson

Created on: October 03, 2009

Why animals considered endangered in one state can be plentiful in another is a question often asked by children. I mean two states side by side can have totally different habitats and that is easy to explain. For instance if one state is all dessert and the other has mountains and streams, it is understandable. Yet something like burrowing snakes are considered common in New York and yet protected in Massachusetts. Why?

There are two answers, habitat and man.

The habitats may look identical, but not be. Many rare and endangered species are closely tied into their ecosystems and when something changes, they can either disappear or start to thrive. in some states of Mexico jaguars thrive and yet next door they are extinct. Something such as a dry period may have happened a while back and they died off, then the environment went back to normal but the jaguars never returned.

A butterfly may rely on one type of flower that it needs for reproduction and now that plant is gone, so the butterfly disappears as well. Or the plant may suddenly do really well and butterfly numbers increase exponentially1 It works both ways. Many animals are sensitive to minor changes in habitat that most people never notice.

Man is also a problem and frequently the reason the habitat changes. He may spray a pesticide in South Carolina that is illegal in North Carolina, so something changes, and those endangered species are sensitive to changes in their environment. He may be killing ticks in the wild and they spread diseases. The ticks disappear, the diseases are no longer prevalent and the rare species suddenly take over!

Man also likes to create borders, and that is all that a state line is. Those borders may be fences, highways or even canals. What ever they are, they can block access to the endangered species,. Even if the food and habitat are there, the animal can't get to it. France found out frogs were disappearing in some places, but not in others and yet there were not pesticide or pollution difference, then they found out it was roads and train tracks! Now they have made "toad tunnels". This can also happen in nature with the obstacles being rivers or mountains, but man builds most!

Why can endangered animals be plentiful in one area or state and yet rare in another? Habitat and man, and frequently the two are the interlinked!

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