The Importance of Biodiversity

THE IMPORTANCE OF BIODIVERSITY

“We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.”  - E. O. Wilson

One of the things we should be completely responsible about and in reality we care a little or even nothing is taking care and respecting biodiversity.

Biodiversity has a giant content due that it is everything in our planet; in this essay I define it as the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is one measure of the health of ecosystems. Life on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biological species.

As we know biodiversity has direct economic, aesthetic and scientific values. Biodiversity is important to our biosphere just because it is life and our biosphere is everything that surrounds us; here is where we can notice the aesthetic value. Our biosphere needs a perfect balance in between all its species to keep on working and have a nice stability. The food chain is a crucial role in the biosphere and it only happens with the balance of our biodiversity. In the same way, biodiversity is important in maintaining different types of animals so that once a change happens, there are many different types of animals that are available to adapt into the changing environment. Too many people do not recognize that, that change is part of the natural state of things and when they try to prevent any change, they are in fact interfering.(1) (Biodiversity – Species Richness of the Biosphere.)

           

            Now, maintaining biodiversity has as well a direct impact to humanity. Here is where we can find its economic value. Biodiversity performs a number of ecological services for humankind. The notion that biodiversity has provided us with many benefits is well understood. Some of these benefits come in the form of goods that can be directly values and costed because they provide something that can be extracted and sold. These goods include everything from all the domesticated agricultural crops that form the basis of the world's food supply, to medicines that protect and cure us to the fibers that make up the clothes we wear. Thus biodiversity is widely valued as food pantry, genetic storehouse for biotechnology and a place to retreat to when we need to get away from our intense urban existence.(2) (Importance of biodiversity. Quebec Biodiversity Website) The humans are the only ones capable of altering completely the biodiversity, and we are the ones that don’t even notice sometimes the big changes and mistakes we are doing on it. There is going to be the time when we figure out all the damage that we have made, but it is going to be too late to start restoring it, however human being are the ones that are going to be more damaged not only in the aspect of food but also, as I explained before, in the industrialization of clothes and medicines just to name some.

I’m glad to know that Mexico is a country that at least has conscience about the damage that we are making to biodiversity, but the sad part of it, is that we almost don’t do anything to conserve it. The loss of biodiversity has impacted Mexico’s economy in the way that the government had invested lots of money trying to maintain a good quality on the crops, preserving healthful fertile soils, making many scientific experiments and treatments to cure human diseases, restoring big territories after floods, droughts or any other natural disaster caused by a change or alter in our biosphere, etc.(3) (Regina’s Biology notebook from Ms. Zohemy’s class.)

Finally, I would like to propose some ways to maintain or restore biodiversity in Yucatan. Yucatan is a vast state in animals, plants and ecosystems, thus they are in danger because it doesn’t have rivers neither lakes and the cities are rapidly growing, making disappear the jungles and green areas.(4) (Recuperando Biodiversidad en Yucatan, Mexico.) What I propose is to take care of our beaches, mangrove swamps, green areas, water holes, our birds, animals and the sea, in the way of not polluting, or leaving trash in anyplace, respecting the wildlife and being conscientious of their value.   

References –

·         (1) Biodiversity – Species Richness of the Biosphere.                    

I.E. School of biology.

http://science.jrank.org/pages/865/Biodiversity.html

·         (2) Importance of biodiversity.

Quebec Biodiversity Website

http://redpathmuseum.mcgill.ca/Qbp/2.About%20Biodiversity/importance.html

·         (3) Regina’s Biology notebook from Ms. Zohemy’s class.

·         (4) Recuperando Biodiversidad en Yucatan, Mexico.

http://www.grain.org/biodiversidad_files/biodiv234.pdf