~ 94 ~ The Pharma Innovation Journal 2018; 7(4): 94-102 ISSN (E): 2277- 7695 ISSN (P): 2349-8242 NAAS Rating: 5.03 TPI 2018; 7(4): 94-102 © 2018 TPI www.thepharmajournal.com Received: 10-02-2018 Accepted: 11-03-2018 Preeti Department of Animal Nutrition, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India Jagish Kour Reen Genetics Laboratory, Dairy Production Section, ICAR - National Dairy Research Institute, Southern Regional Station, Adugodi, Bengaluru, India Manjula Thakur Department of Animal Nutrition, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India Madhu Suman Assistant Professor, Instruction Livestock Farm Complex, College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India Rohit Kumar Department of Animal Nutrition, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India Correspondence Preeti Department of Animal Nutrition, National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India Consequences of pollution in wildlife: A review Preeti, Jagish Kour Reen, Manjula Thakur, Madhu Suman and Rohit Kumar Abstract In human dominated landscape, effects of human activites and disturbance exceed those of wild animal habitat and natural predators. Human disturbance and pollution caused by various sources can influence wildlife behaviour, which have negative impact on wildlife populations and lead to the decline of many species, both directly and indirectly. Mechanism which can explain coexistence of both human and wildlife together is the degree to which a species tolerates human disturbance and pollution. With advancement in technology day by day, humans are causing changes in the environment that hurt both animals and plant species. Humans take up more space on earth for their homes and cities compromising the space for habitat of wild animals. So, animals and plants have gone through a hard time for their survival on earth. It is estimated that over two thirds of the animal and plant species that once lived with harmony in nature are now extinct and some more are on the verge of extinction. Keywords: human activites, loss of wildlife habitat, pollution, and wildlife Introduction Living organisms cannot live by themselves, their interaction with each other balances the nature with all living organisms as well as physical surroundings that forms collectively an environment. Pollution is the introduction of potentially harmful chemical or physical constituents into the environment, in which substances substantially harm individual species metabolisms, or which strongly and rapidly alter a stable historic ecosystem composition (Hogan, 2010). Human has modified the environment and imbalance the nature for several means that results into pollution. Environmental pollution is the major reason in which humans have caused drastic modifications of wildlife habitat. Previously, we neglected the air, water, and soil pollution that surround us as waste receptacles and underestimated the ecological consequences of our actions. As a result, wildlife is facing a bewildering array of pollutants of various types that are released into the environment either intentionally or accidently. At worse, air and water pollution can cause death of many organisms in a given ecosystem, including humans. Carnivores (>40 kg) which are large in size such as tiger, leopard and wolves are more susceptible to human disturbance like road building, settlements, farmlands, logging, poaching, grazing and quarrying and changes in the configuration and connectivity of habitats such as habitat fragmentation and loss (Dusit et al., 2007, Bishnu and Pavel, 2013) [20, 8] . Some studies have suggested that the prey abundance and the human disturbance are the most important parameters for tiger occupancy, and serious disturbances can cause prey depletion and tiger extinction (Bishnu and Pavel, 2013) [8] . In recent decades, conflict between human and wildlife survival has narrowed much due to exponential increase in the human population and much interference of wild habitat by increasing human activity (Pettigrew et al., 2012) [69] . In some cases due to increasing anthropogenic activities and pollution, wildlife populations have suffered severe losses or even faced extinction. The most important causal anthropogenic activities are habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution and the introduction of alien species to an environment. Habitat destruction elements include agricultural land conversion, deforestation, overgrazing and urbanization; within these activities the process of habitat fragmentation is sometimes hidden cause of major biodiversity loss. Among them, habitat destruction is the greatest contributor to the extinction of many species; moreover, impacts to biota from habitat fragmentation are a critical mechanism for species extinction. Human-induced rapid environmental change has altered the animal behavior, species interactions in wild and also species declines, including extinctions and range shifts (Jackson and Sax 2010) [41] . This destruction is ongoing in both terrestrial and aquatic biomass, with approximately 80% of all extinctions being attributed to human caused