For my research, I decided to study three issues concerning wildlife. One issue is the declining numbers of honey bees. One species of honey bees was very recently put on the endangered species list due to the declining population sizes. This issue is important to me because I personally believe that Bees are very interesting creatures and because they are very important. They are significant to society because without Bees we wouldn’t have one. They play an integral part to the environment which I shall discuss later in my report. Another issue I researched was the growing coyote populations in urban areas. Coyotes are starting to live in city areas and are surprisingly thriving. I find this very fascinating and I really love coyotes so this issues sounded interesting to learn more about. Concerning society, this issue is important because Coyotes are getting more up close and personal with large human populations. The last issue I chose to explore is how bats are spreading the rabies virus in Australia and Africa. I wanted to study this because bats are my favorite animals and this virus could end up negatively impacting their livelihood and how the public perceives them. This issue would defiantly impact society because many people could be at risk of contracting the rabies virus that infected bats carry.

I chose to study issues in the wildlife area because I’m very passionate about the welfare of wild species and I wish to do as much as I can to understand the current issues concerning wildlife. Each issue I researched has impacts on the three pillars of sustainability. The issue concerning Bee populations has some very significant concerns to each. Society will be impacted because if the Bee populations continue to decline then people will lose valuable resources like fruits, vegetables, even meats. Without Bees to pollinate them, plants and animals in the environment will die. While the environment faces the decline of plants and animals, farmers and other food processing companies will lose their supply to sell which will greatly damage the economy. My second issue of the Coyote populations in urban areas will impact society because coyotes will have conflicts with humans and pets in urban settings which could lead to concerning injuries. The environment will change because urban areas will now have a new predator in the ecosystem to hunt and change the balance of the food chain. Economically, the studies that are being done on this new phenomenon will need new funding to further research the presence of Coyotes in the city. The last issue of Infectious Bats would harm society because people could contract the Rabies virus and get sick and die. This will also further stigmatize bats as generally harmful creatures which is not true. The environment would be impacted because other animals, besides humans, who encounter a Rabies infected bat could also get sick and die which could wipe out many individuals in an ecosystem. Similar to the Coyote issue, money would need to be spent on researching a solution to this issue and also money would need to be spent on treating infected people and animals that are infected with the virus.

After researching each issue, I decided to further study the problems associated with the declining Bee populations. I chose this issue because I believe that this issue has a huge impact on so many aspects of daily life that it can’t be ignored. When I continue to research this issue throughout the semester I intend to study a few different aspects to this problem. I know that each problem that impacts our society the most, generally isn’t easy to solve. I will study different sides to this issue to gain a fuller understanding of the complexity to this issue. I expect that there will be multiple challenges that I will face during my researching. One challenge I may face is finding multiple reliable sources that will provide the information I need to understand the problems behind the Bee population decline. I also may find understanding more scientific articles difficult when I try to gather data and information using science journals or articles. Regardless of the challenges I may face I look forward to studying such an important issue and trying to formulate my own solution to such a complex problem.