Fact Sheet
Desert
Threats
- Military activities and off-road vehicles do cause extensive, lasting damage to the fragile desert cover.
- Although mining activities affect small areas directly, they have significant impacts on surrounding areas.
- Grazing pressure on the desert, and especially on the desert margin, is the most extensive agent of land degradation
- The impacts of changes in precipitation and temperature patterns due to global climate change will be highly variable from one region to the next, but they are likely to be felt the hardest in desert margins and in desert montane areas, as these are where the principal arid rangelands are located.
Legal Status/Protection
According to Chape, et. Al, 2004: 11.06% of warm deserts and semi-arid deserts are protected areas worldwide and 14.44% of cold-winter deserts are under some form of protection.1
More on Desert: What You Can Do to Help Deserts »
More on Desert:
Fast Facts
Deserts are second only to tropical rain forests in the variety of plants and animals that live there.
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Where We Work
Our Southwest team works to protect rare and threatened species like Mexican wolves, jaguars and ocelots.
Conservation Issue
Climate change is now one of the leading threats to wildlife. Find out what Defenders is doing to help animals around the country survive in a warming planet.
In the Magazine
While the desert may look deserted to some, the land where these companies want to site their projects is often home to species such as the threatened desert tortoise that don’t have other places to go.