ENVIRONMENTS

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The Untouched Life in the Wilderness

by: Worldwide Media    9:23 minutes

Transcript

The Untouched Life in the Wilderness Areas of wilderness are part of the world that have been left untouched by modern men. They are islands of nature in a world changed by humanity. Some places have survived in their natural state because they adjust too harsh to support even smaller populations. Other survived because people wanted to preserve regions of natural beauty. In the middle of the 18th century, the world’s population was less than 800 million. Today, it is approaching 7 billion people all needing a share of the earths’ resources. Some areas of standing cultural or natural importance to the world are protected as world heritage sites. Shiretoko Peninsula at the North Eastern end of the Japanese island of Hokkaido was recently listed because it is an outstanding example of the interaction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. The site is globally important to threaten sea birds and migratory birds. The forests of the park are mixed temperate and sub-alpine and they are accessible only by boat or on foot. They are home to Japan’s largest brown bear population. High in the waste in Himalayas, India’s Valley of Flowers National Park is also protected as a world heritage site. The park is known for tomatoes of alpine flowers. It encompasses a unique transition zone between the mountain ranges of the Zanskar and Great Himalaya. It adjoins the Nanda Devi National park which was inscribed on the world heritage list in 1988. In Norway, Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord are among the world’s longest and deepest fjords. They are crystalline rock walls rise up to 1400 meters from the Norwegian Sea and extend 500 meters below sea level. The archipelago of St. Kilada in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides was initially inscribed in the world heritage list for its outstanding natural features and wildlife in 1986. Recently, the sites’ inscription was extended to cover its cultural value. Populated until the 1930’s, the islands bare evidence of more than 2,000 years of human occupation, they include stone structures dating back to the Bronze Age and the remains of a subsistence economy. Vredefort Dome, south west of Johannesburg is a representative part of a larger meteorite impact structure or astrobleme. Dating back 2000 million years, it is the oldest and largest astrobleme on earth. The desert is not a place you would expect to find the whales but the Wadi Al-Hitan Valley in the western desert of the Egypt contains fossil remains of the earliest known suborder of whales, the Archaeoceti. These fossils represent one of the major stories of evolution, the emergence of the whale as an ocean going mammal. The Sea of Cortez and its islands in the Gulf of California in Northeastern Mexico had been called a natural laboratory. Almost all major oceanographic possesses occurring in the planet’s oceans are present in this area. Coiba National Park of the southwest coast of Panama protects Coiba Island, 38 smaller islands and their surrounding marine areas within the Gulf of Chiriqui. It provides a key ecological link to the tropical eastern pacific for the transit and survival of pelagic fish and marine mammals. The park provides shelter through 891 different fish species and is 2/5 of the worlds’ marine citations while it’s tropical jungles, a home to howler monkeys, scarlet macaws and crested eagles. The last great wilderness is Antarctica, the frozen continent. Almost all of Antarctica is covered by ice with an average thickness of ½ kilometers. It belongs to no country, though, some nations have laid claim to parts of the continent; these are not generally recognized by other countries. There is an in international treaty regulating activity in Antarctica for the continents frigid climate is what really protects it from exploitation. The Madrid protocol ends all mining activities in Antarctica, designating the continent as a natural reserved devoted to peace and science. Many countries maintains scientific basis in the Antarctic. The poles are showing signs of climate change. Large parts of the Ross Ice Shelf appear to be cracking and large icebergs are breaking off, so Antarctica provides a natural laboratory for climatologists. A British survey team has setup a temporary base on the ice sheet to extract core samples from the ice. Small bubbles trapped within the ice have preserved the record of the composition of the earths’ atmosphere. Antarctica supports a range of especially adapted animals that all rely on the rich Southern Ocean for food. These macaroni penguins mostly eat krill, a small marine crustacean that is a staple for so many of the marine species that migrates to the southern waters during the summer months but over the past few years, krill identities have been down and marine biologists are not sure why. Melt rates at the pose seem to be increasing. An observation suggests, the western ice sheet is thinning, though, the larger eastern ice sheet maybe thickening. Satellite observations suggests that since 1992, the western ice sheet has lost 31 cubic kilometers of ice due largely to the fast flowing Pine Island Glacier here which carries ice from the interior to the sea. The Pine Island Glacier is up to 2 ½ thousand meter thick and flows over bedrock which lies over 1 ½ kilometers below sea level. Along with this white glacier, the Pine Island Glacier is flowing at an accelerated rate. This breeding colony of a Adelie Penguin has roughly half a million birds with each nest just out of pecking distance of those that surround it. Of the 17 species of penguin, only four are nesting in Antarctica while the third of the three nesting on neighboring islands. During the summer months, albatrosses nest around the margins of the southern continent. Because it is so cold, the Southern Ocean is able to hold high levels of this old oxygen which is why it supports such an abundance of life. Penguin breeding pair takes turns to go to sea to feed. They are vulnerable to the seals which wait below the rookeries for an easy meal. Further from the sea on the pack ice, the emperor penguins form their breeding colonies. These are the largest penguins and they’re the only creature to spend the dark winter in Antarctica. They do not build nests instead the male will cradle the one egg on its feet while the female goes to sea. When the chick hatches of the end of winter, the female returns and the male goes to feed for the first time in 2 months. Most creatures in the Antarctic wilderness are not afraid of human beings. The British Antarctic survey is part of a five-year global science in the Antarctic project. The aim is to understand the effects of climate change on sea levels and the global weather systems. BAS has 18 separate studies on the way including research into the stability of the Antarctic ice sheets and the examination of ice cores to find out more about temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the earths’ atmosphere across vast time scales. Ice cores contain an accurate record of past climate. Deep core samples from the Russian Vostok Base have yielded atmospheric information from as much as 720,000 years ago. Though the Antarctic is a very harsh place, it is also a very fragile. The changes just becoming obvious here will have a planetary significance.

 The Untouched Life in the Wilderness