Introduction

Biological weapons are the most unsafe arms associated with bulk destruction because they are adopted intentionally to stimulate epidemics outbreak in the environment inhabited by man. The vital components of the environment such as soil, water, air, farm animals and crops are destroy. Common epidemic outbreak linked to biological conflicts are avian flu, anthrax, cholera, smallpox and plague.

Advantages of Biological Weapons

Few advantages of Biological weapons are;

(i). they are usually adopted for mass destruction

(ii). it is less expensive

(iii) the spread very fast

(iv). it is very easy to prepare, convey and utilized

(v). it is odorless and colourless, making it difficult to be discovered in the environment during war

(vi). it is hard to differentiate its clinical signs from ordinary diseases

(vii).disease causing organisms associated with biological weapon can withstand and thrive in severe ecological conditions.

Effects of Biological weapons

The effects are biological weapons are; It poses danger to natural resources and biodiversity. It also poses danger to animal and plant biodiversity.

1. It Poses Danger to Natural Resources

High quality air, water, food and the surround are very essential for survive of biotic components of the environment. However, the environment and its content such as air, water and food may be polluted germs spread by biological weapons, resulting to epidemic outbreak for diverse living organisms. Some of the examples are given below

a. Air: Air can be polluted using fungi because they are highly mobile and can travel long distances in air to attack plants that are healthy.

b. Food poisoning: Another great way to lunch biological weapons is through food contamination, because it is the fastest method of transmitting diseases to man either by drinking or eating contaminated food.

c. Water: So many deadly disease can be transmitted by water. For instance a gram of Clostridium tetani poison has a very good ability to eliminate a whole community within six hours, because it can eliminate approximately eight million people within the aforementioned period.

2.It Poses Danger to Biodiversity

One of the fundamental causes of wildlife extinction in endangered species are diseases. In order to safeguard biodiversity disease control is very essential. However, there are vaccines for most bioweapons, but not enough to deal with and combat epidemic outburst which may affect endemic or rare plants and animals found in a locality especially those trying to survive in degraded environment. In addition human, animals and some plants dwelling at home can thrive in the presences of some of these diseases because they have been able to build immunity to withstand such infection but some wild plants and animals may be affected drastically. Bioweapons may affect genetic composition of endemic biodiversity including plant and animal community assemblage.

3.It Poses Danger to Animal Biodiversity

In order to sustain genetic diversity there is need to safeguard breeds of farm animals. This will enhance rapid rise in capability of living things to cope with environmental variability. Some of the effects of biological weapons are;

i. Straight effect of disease on wild animals

Selected noxious diseases in man and farm animals may affect wild animals and this has been proven over the years for instance Canine distemper. The aforementioned was built in biological weapon research laboratory. Canine distemper is a disease that is associated with domestic dogs and wild dogs. This is responsible for extinction of huge population of wildlife species globally.

ii. Invasive species

Fatal diseases in wildlife species and farm animals can be forecasted using rinderpest as an ideal. Rinderpest outburst was witness in 1887 in Africa when infected cattle were imported resulting to ninety to ninety-five percent death of African cattle and buffaloes in less than four years. The effect still persist till date because the outburst still occur all the time in Africa.

iii. Eradication of animal species, hosts, and vectors

Any location subjected to biological attacks, stand a chance of risking threatened species and such species may be shattered drastically. For instance in United States of America, the government had made some effort to curtailed brucellosis in farm animals but ended killing some big wildlife species such as the white tailed deer and the Bison.

4. It Poses Danger to Plant Biodiversity

In order to destroy plants on the farm microbes can be adopted. A very good example is rice blast. This disease is associated with rice and it can equally damage rice and alter its genetic composition.

Conclusion

War between nations is humanly and environmentally unfriendly, therefore the need to remind nations on the essence of biodiversity Conservation becomes imperative. No matter how provocative the situation might be, there is need for nations to take precaution and seek the part of dialogue in conflict resolutions due to the risk pose by biological weapons to human and the environment. If biological attacks are not averted it may result to decline in animal and plant diversity with respect to genetic composition coupled with rise in extinction of endangered species and complete collapse of livelihoods and customary values dependent upon by man.