Top 5 Ways Conservationists Cause Animal Extinction

3. Bans on Travel within the United States for Endangered Animals Keeps Mating from Happening

Sometimes private owners of domesticated animals of an endangered species want to allow their own animal to breed for social reasons of better life satisfaction and not in order to sell the offspring. But when individual specimens live in different states, and the government does not allow them to travel, they can never meet to breed.

Bow, a fourteen year old literate male chimpanzee who lives in Missouri, has his eye on an attractive female chimp who lives in Florida. He has seen videos of her on Youtube, and he would like to get to know her better. Sadly, due to the ban on travel, even if their owners could come to some kind of agreement about a date for the two, unless US Fish & Wildlife approve, they will never meet face to face.

Creating a protected status for animals dooms that animal in more ways than one. Because American wild mustangs are now protected, they can no longer be sold. Because there is no market for them and there is no way to make a profit on their sale, many mustangs are starving to death. Charities try to help but often fail. 

Environmentalists are blaming this on “greedy ranchers”, but actually it is an attempt by the Bureau of Land Management to preserve the protected wild status of the mustangs that is dooming them. The irony is that horses, like chimpanzees, are not native to the North America. They were brought here by European settlers, and some escaped. They are not native wildlife. They are just feral.