Why are so many animals becoming extinct?

The three main causes are...
1.  Habitat loss
2.  Climate change
3.  Bushmeat trade

...and to the above poster, it has been decades since zoos have collected animals from the wild.  Please check your facts before posting again.

Human encroachment ...poor people trying to simply survive farm land that animals live changing their environment drastically... sadly placed in their situation you wouldn't care about the animals habitat either ... education and support from the countries that have the money and resources is sorely needed and lots of birth control

they are dying over to overpopulation of people. we are cutting into their habitats everyday, especially the rainforests so there is not enough space for them to live. its horrible, people need to stop before we kill our entire planet.

Loss of habitat. Poaching. It's nothing new. This has been happening ever since man invented the spear. On the plus side we are also discovering animals in the wild that were thought to be extinct and we are finding new species all over the world.

Well, extinction is always a part of the nature: weak species must go extinct in order to make strong species able to survive.

But I like the point you are making: now a days more species are disappearing at a much faster rate than ever before. The reason for this is us. By contaminating, over hunting, destroying ecosystems, etc we are forcing many species to the extinction. Scientists agree that the number of species that are extinct because of us could easily approach the number of species that became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous (all dinosaurs, plus many other reptiles and birds).

Those reasons that you give are very true. Over-hunting is the responsible for the extinction of many species. In many cases these species were just hunted until extinction; in carnivores is the over-hunting of their prey that makes them endangered.

Global Warming could be a real threat in the future, but as of today no species have gone extinct because of global warming.

Destruction of habitat is for me the most lethal among the three. Deforestation and burning of forests threaten thousands of species in the World. Contamination in seas, lakes, and rivers is just as lethal.


EXAMPLES OF SPECIES THAT BECAME EXTINCT BECAUSE OF US:

1.-Dodo: a flightless bird endemic to the country of Mauritius, it was hunted until its extinction in the 1600s

2.-Caribbean Monk Seal: the only seal that lived in the Caribbean, it became extinct because of over hunting soon after the arrival of the Colonists in the Americas.

3.-Thylacine/Tasmanian Tiger: the largest carnivorous marsupial; it became extinct during the 1900s because of over-hunting, destruction of its habitat, and the introduction of the Dingo to Australia.

4.-Quagga: similar to the zebra, but it had brown skin; it became extinct during the 20th Century because of over-hunting.

5.-Golden Toad: a small toad endemic to Costa Rica, it became extinct during the 1980's because of climate change.



EXAMPLES OF SPECIES THAT COULD BECOME EXTINCT BECAUSE OF US IN THE NEXT 50 YEARS:

1.-Tiger: only 3,500 left in the wild, mostly on India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.

2.-Javan Rhinoceros: around 70 individuals left in the wild, almost all of them in Java, Indonesia. Around 3-7 still live in a National Park in Vietnam.

3.-Spix's Macaw: probably extinct in wild, endemic to Northeastern Brazil. There are aroun 73 of these macaws in captivity.

4.-Saola: an ox species from Eastern Indochina. Nobady knows how many are still alive

5.-Polar Bear: although not in immediately risk of extinction, the Polar Bear could go extinct by the end of the 21st Century if the Earth's Temperature rises by 3 degrees Celsius.

The MAIN cause is habitat destruction/fragmentation.  Other factors include poaching, introduction of invasive/non-native species and global warming.