Creating safe places
People need space to live, work, and play, and animals need space too.
Sometimes it is difficult to find space for both people and animals.
To begin with, just think about the changes in the number of people
on the Earth. In the year 1100 three were 320 million people on the
planet. In the next eight hundred years the number of people slowly
grew to 1,500 million (1.5 billion). But since 1900 the number of
people has grown more quickly: 2.5 billion in 1950, 5 billion in 1987,
and 6.6 billion in 2008. By 2050 how many people will there be?
Every year there are more and more people on the Earth. They cut
down trees and take land for their cattle, sheep and other animals,
or to grow food, or to build hojuses and cities. That means less
space for the wild animals of the forest and open land. What happens
when people and animals try to live next to one another?
The North American bison
The first bison came to North America from Asia about 200,000 years
ago. They were very big, heavy animals - about 2,300 kilograms - with
horns nearly two metrres across.
The Native Americans began to hunt bison thousands of years ago.
They used the skins to make clothes, homes, and canoes, and from the
bones they made tings to fight with. The bison was a very important
part of their lives. In the early 1800s there were about 60 million bison
across all of North America.
When Europeans came to North America they too were interested in
the bison. They enjoyed hunting and wanted the skins to make coats,
so they began to kill bison by the million. Often they took the skins and
some of the meat from the head, and left the rest of the animal there
on the ground. White people also killed bison because they thought
they were a danger to their cattle. You could even pay ten dollars to
ride on a train and shoot bison all day.
By 1895, there were only 800 bison in North America. In 1902 people
took forty-one animals to Yellowstone National Park. Nobody can
hunt animals in a national park, so the bison could live there without
danger. Now there are about 350,000 bison in North America again.
That is very lucky. When there are only 800 animals of one species
in the world, it is very easy for the species to disappear forever.
You can find national parks in different parts of the world.
In Australia there is one around the Great Barrier Reef,
which protects the fish and plants that live there. Some
parks are made to protect places that are beautiful, like
Yosemite Park in the United States, or Sagarmatha National
Park in Nepal. But how did national parks begin? The first
national park was made in the United States more than a
hundred years ago, and the person who worked hardest to
make it was John Muir.
John Muir
Muir was born in Scotland in 1838, but moved to the United
States with his family in 1849. He worked for his father, looking after
his animals and growing food, but he also enjoyed walking
in the forests and fields near his home. In 1863 he began travelling
across the United States and Canada, and went to many other
parts of the world, too. In 1868 he arrived in California.
When he saw the beautiful mountains of the Sierra Nevada
for the first time, he thought that they were womderful, and from
that they California was his home. He went on travelling and writing,
telling people about the mountains and the wild country, and asking
them to enjoy and protect these special places.
Animals like sheep and cattle damaged the mountain
forests, and this worried Muir. He wrote to newspapers
and gave talks about the problem. At last, in 1890, the US
government made Yosemite National Park. Muir helped to
make four more national parks, and he began the Sierra Club
to help protect wild places, and people called him 'the
father of the national parks'. He went on doing this work
until he died in 1914.
The idea of national parks travelled to other countries and
today nearly 3% of the world's land is safe. But some animals
are alive today mostly because one person has worked very
hard to make a safe place for them. What makes somebody decide to do this?
Alan Rabinowitz
It is not unusual for children to like animals, but Alan
Rabinowiz had a special reason for this. When he was a child, he
couldn't talk very well, and he did not like speaking.
It was easier for him to communicate with animals than
with people, and he spent a lot of time with animals. When
he was older he was still interested in animals, and he studied
them at university. Then in 1979 he got a job in Belize, in
Central America. His job was to study jaguars.
Rabinowitz's plan was to catch jaguars and put radios on
them. Then he could learn about how they lived and what
dangers there were for jaguars in Belize. He was the first
person to study jaguars like this. He spent three years in
Belize doing this; during this time he was in a plane crash,
and a wild animal killed one of his workers, but he still went
on working.
After five years, in 1984,