Are direct threats restricted to human activities? If so, why are natural disasters and weather events direct threats?
For the most part, direct threats are limited to human activities. Thus fires set by lighting or tropical storms that blow down large swaths of forest are not threats, but instead part of a natural (and often necessary) disturbance regime. There is a fine line, however, between a naturally occurring event such as a fire set by lightning and a human-caused threat such as a fire set by a match or even increased intensity of fires due to forest management practices. In general, we would regard the latter two as direct threats whereas the former is not. However, if the forest fires set by lighting would potentially affect the last population of Javan rhinos, then we would have to regard it as a threat to this species, even if it is not a threat the forest habitat itself. Following this logic, we have also included geological events and climate change & severe weather in our classification of direct threats. If humans were not putting pressure on species and ecosystems, than the effects of
