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Overexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource. The term applies to natural resources such as: wild medicinal plants, grazing pastures, game animals, fish stocks, forests, and water aquifers. In ecology, overexploitation describes one of the five main activities threatening global biodiversity. Ecologists use the term to describe populations that are harvested at a rate that is unsustainable, given their natural rates of mortality and capacities for reproduction. This can result in extinction at the population level and even extinction of whole species. In conservation biology the term is usually used in the context of human economic activity that involves the taking of biological resources, or organisms, in larger numbers than their populations can withstand.〔Oxford. (1996). Oxford Dictionary of Biology. Oxford University Press.〕 The term is also used and defined somewhat differently in fisheries, hydrology and natural resource management. Overexploitation can lead to resource destruction, including extinctions. However it is also possible for overexploitation to be sustainable, as discussed below in the section on fisheries. In the context of fishing, the term overfishing can be used instead of overexploitation, as can overgrazing in stock management, overlogging in forest management, overdrafting in aquifer management, and endangered species in species monitoring. Overexploitation is not an activity limited to humans. Introduced predators and herbivores, for example, can overexploit native flora and fauna. ==History== Concern about overexploitation is relatively recent, though overexploitation itself is not a new phenomenon. It has been observed for millennia. For example, ceremonial cloaks worn by the Hawaiian kings were made from the mamo bird; a single cloak used the feathers of 70,000 birds of this now-extinct species. The dodo, a flightless bird from Mauritius, is another well known example of overexploitation. As with many island species, it was naive about certain predators, allowing humans to approach and kill it with ease. From the earliest of times, hunting has been an important human activity as a means of survival. There is a whole history of overexploitation in the form of overhunting. The overkill hypothesis (Quaternary extinction events) explains why the megafaunal extinctions occurred within a relatively short period of time. This can be traced with human migration. The most convincing evidence of this theory is that 80% of the North American large mammal species disappeared within 1000 years of the arrival of humans on the western hemisphere continents.〔Paul S. Martin〕 The fastest ever recorded extinction of megafauna occurred in New Zealand, where by 1500 AD, just 200 years after settling the islands, ten species of the giant moa birds were hunted to extinction by the Māori. A second wave of extinctions occurred later with European settlement. In more recent times, overexploitation has resulted in the gradual emergence of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, which has built on other concepts, such as sustainable yield, eco-development and deep ecology. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Overexploitation」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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