Many animal species have spiritual significance in different cultures around the world, and they and their products may be used as sacred objects in religious rituals. For example, eagles, hawks and their feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to Native Americans as religious objects. In Hinduism the cow is regarded sacred.
Many countries have established their tourism sector around their natural wildlife. South Africa has, for example, many opportunities for tourists to see the country's wildlife in its National Parks, such as the Kruger Park.In South India the Periar Wildlife Sanctuary, Bandipur National Park and Mudamalai Wildlife Sanctuary are situated around and in forests.
Map of early human migrations, according to mitochondrial population genetics. Numbers are millennia before the present. This subsection focuses on anthropogenic forms of wildlife destruction. Exploitation of wild populations has been a characteristic of modern man since our exodus from Africa 130,000 - 70,000 years ago.
The rate of extinctions of entire species of plants and animals across the planet has been so high in the last few hundred years it is widely believed that we are in the sixth great extinction event on this planet; the Holocene Mass Extinction. Destruction of wildlife does not always lead to an extinction of the species in question, however, the dramatic loss of entire species across Earth dominates any review of wildlife destruction as extinction is the level of damage to a wild population from which there is no return.
The four most general reasons that lead to destruction of wildlife include overkill, habitat destruction and fragmentation, impact of introduced species and chains of extinction. Overkill happens whenever hunting occurs at rates greater than the reproductive capacity of the population is being exploited. The effects of this are often noticed much more dramatically in slow growing populations such as many larger species of fish.