When I was growing up, my nights were filled with the lullaby of frogs croaking in the surrounding swamps especially during the rainy season. They were usually so many that their croak in unionism could be hear meters away.

There were also the grass cutters and several other species of rodents which often struggled for space with me in my tiny room. Not to mention of the sparse wild herbivores (antelopes) that often strayed into the neighbourhood to help their stomach with the abandoned bushes.

 Before my very eyes, eluding my consciousness of time, they started to disappear, one after the other. A few were shot by hunters because the people in my community crave for bush meat – they said it was sweeter. I don?t know how true that is.

Rodents for example are very important in the ecosystem because through their boring activities, helps to aerate the soil. They too are now very endangered because they have become part of bush meat (Yongu as the Tiv ethnic group calls them and the prices are very exorbitant ant attractive meaning that more and more people are going into the trade).

However, the majority of them migrated because the environment has been made unfavourable for them to stay. How? Because of the houses springing here and there. I am not against urbanization in any way but my problem with some of those big houses that distorted the natural habitat of those fauna is that till date they are uninhabited.

There was this cashew tree besides my house that bore massive amount of fruits during its season but when my neighbour began construction, it was uprooted. Though cashew is far from becoming extinct in Nigeria, that very tree is one I will never forget.

Like I mentioned some time age, if not for traditional believe in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, the fate of monkeys should have been questionable too. In other parts of the country where such believes do not apply, monkeys are either killed for meat or locked up in cages as pets.

With the current drive by the government of Nigeria to improve the infrastructure of the nation, my concern is that more flora and fauna may go extinct as it appears currently as if no one is ready to fight for them. It is therefore my plea that government and citizens alike should consider the biodiversity in their development endeavours. It will not be funny if we will have to tell our children stories of some plants and animals that once existed.