The first thing we can do to protect biodiversity is to stop encroaching on natural spaces by protecting them and all of those creatures that live within them. There is an international system for preserving spaces and making sure that they remain preserved.
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Similar to protecting natural spaces, protecting endangered species is going to be one of the most important ways to preserve biodiversity.
Explore Biodiversity
Environmental education is very important because it is what gives people knowledge of why we need to worry about the environment and what to do about it. It also brings the problems from big, far away ideas, into a person's daily life.
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The Importance of Biodiversity
Biodiversity has
three different parts to it; the variety of distinct species in a geographical area, the genetic diversity of the individual species within a population, and the variety of ecosystems within a geographical area. In August of 2005, then-United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that a failure to conserve and use biological diversity in a sustainable manner would result in degrading environments, new and more rampant illnesses, deepening poverty, and a continued pattern of inequitable and untenable growth. He noted that
the maintenance of biodiversity was essential to all of the other social concerns that the United Nations and the rest of the world are attempting to address.
Imagine the Earth as an incredibly complex machine with lots and lots of little parts that has been built over billions of years. It is unlikely that there will be many unnecessary parts that can be taken out at random, because you don't know what other parts you will then effect. For example, much of our agriculture is dependent on nitrogen-rich soil that is produced from worms, bacteria, and other life found in the soil that you can't see or that you wouldn't usually think of when you dig into your ear of corn. Similarly, the ocean ecosystems rely on microscopic organisms that absorb CO2, allowing us to have breathable air. Aldo Leopold wrote more than half a century ago about the importance of protecting species. He said
\"To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering\". Today's biodiversity is the result of 4 billion years of evolution of many species that is something that would be very difficult for humans to attempt to tinker with. Humans use at least 40,000 species of plants and animals a day. Of the very many millions of species on the planet, they are all
very much connected in webs that are far reaching and beyond what we understand. In 1997, Cornell University scientists tallied the dollar value of all the services provided for humans on Earth with everything from ecotourism and pollination to soil formation and pharmaceuticals taken into account was
$2.9 trillion per year, although another source put it at $33 trillion. Another important point is just how little we know about species that already exist. For example, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is thought to be one of the best understood national parks in the United States from a biodiversity standpoint, undertook an
All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory that found 280 species not only unknown to exist in the park, but that are completely new to science. For more detail on the impacts of biodiversity on human beings, click the science link.