Biodiversity: A combination of many factors, including a variety of different species, genetic variability among individuals within each species, variety of ecosystems, and function such as energy flow and matter cycling. (textbook)

 

Black Market: Illegal traffic or trade in officially controlled or scarce commodities.

 

Carrying Capacity: Maximum population of a particular species that a given habitat can support over a given period (textbook)

 

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES):  The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. It lists species in danger of extinction and bans the trade, hunting, capturing, or selling of more than 5,000 species of animals.

 

CO2 Sequestering: Plants capture CO2 from the atmosphere in photosynthesis, and store the carbon in their stems and roots. The plants retain and use the carbon to live and grow, and when the plant dies part of the carbon is stored in the soil. (http://www.undeerc.org/pcor/sequestration/whatissequestration.aspx)

 

Deforestation: The permanent destruction of forests in order to make the land available for other uses. An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).Mar 4, 2015

 

Endangered Species Act (ESA): The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 is one of the few dozens of United States environmental laws passed in the 1970s, and serves as the enacting legislation to carry out the provisions outlined in The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
 

Forest Stewardship Council (FSC): The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international not for-profit, multi-stakeholder organization established in 1993 to promote responsible management of the world’s forests. Its main tools for achieving this are standard setting, certification and labelling of forest products.

 

Habitat Destruction: Habitat destruction is the process in which natural habitat is rendered functionally unable to support the species present. In this process, the organisms that previously used the site are displaced or destroyed, reducing biodiversity.

 

Habitat Fragmentation: Habitat fragmentation is the process by which habitat loss results in the division of large, continuous habitats into smaller, more isolated remnants. Thousands of scientific studies now show unequivocal evide

 

HIPPCO: is a acronym for many different meanings for each letter of the word. Each letter represents a way the. environment is affected by succession and evolution.

H: habitat destruction, degradation and fragmentation
I : invasion (non-native)
P: population and resource use growth
P: pollution.
C: Climate change
O: over exploitation
All the above have effects on our environment.

 

Importer: An import is a good brought into a jurisdiction, especially across a national border, from an external source. The party bringing in the good is called an importer. An import in the receiving country is an export from the sending country.

 

Illegal Logging: Illegal logging is the lead cause of degradation of the world's forests. It includes the harvesting, transporting, processing, buying or selling of timber in violation of national laws. Some examples include. Trees are harvested from protected areas and then traded illegally.

 

Keystone Species: Species that play roles affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem. (textbook)

 

Mitigate: Make less severe, serious, or painful.
 

Poaching: Poaching has traditionally been defined as the illegal hunting, killing, or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights.

 

Old Growth Forest: Pure and old forests containing trees that are often hundreds--sometimes thousands--of years old. (textbook)

 

Overpopulation: The condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration and impaired quality of life, or a population crash (Merriam-webster)

 

Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act (RTCA): The Rhinoceros and tiger Conservation Act (“Act”) is a federal legislation providing for the conservation of rhinoceros and tigers by supporting the conservation programs of nations whose activities directly or indirectly affect rhinoceros and tiger populations. The purposes of the act is to provide financial resources for conservation programs and to prohibit the sale, importation, and exportation of products intended for human consumption or any substance derived from any species of rhinoceros or tiger.

 

Source Sites: Areas in which concentrations of tigers are high enough to have the potential to repopulate larger territories

 

World Wildlife Foundation (WWF): The World Wildlife Foundation is an international non-governmental organization founded on April 29, 1961, working in the field of the biodiversity conservation, and the reduction of humanity's footprint on the environment.