Kerry Slug - Threats To The Survival of The Species

Threats To The Survival of The Species

The most serious threat to the species is probably modification of the habitat, which reduces its lichen and moss food sources. This can lead to the local disappearance of the species, which was documented in Spain. Other threats include: intensification of land use (land reclamation, using of pesticides, overgrazing by sheep, removing of shrubs, building gardens, burning, and building roads and highways), tourism, general development pressure, coniferous forest plantations, the spread of invasive species of plants such as Rhododendron ponticum and habitat fragmentation (see also Moorkens 2006).

Other potential dangers to the species include climate change and air pollution, because these negatively affect the lichens which are a food source for the slug. Climate change will probably affect the Iberian populations more seriously, because the climate there is already on the hot and dry side relative to Ireland, which is generally rather cool and damp.

Read more about this topic:  Kerry Slug

Famous quotes containing the words threats to, threats, survival and/or species:

    Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism, not on the basis of preserving Catholic doctrine or preventing the corruption of her children, but simply to ward off threats to her own security and influence.
    Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)

    Southerners, whose ancestors a hundred years ago knew the horrors of a homeland devastated by war, are particularly determined that war shall never come to us again. All Americans understand the basic lessons of history: that we need to be resolute and able to protect ourselves, to prevent threats and domination by others.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)

    We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.
    Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)

    There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.
    Rebecca West (1892–1983)