New News Biology #71

Maintaining Biodiversity

Humans cause a huge amount of damage to the environment, which results in a reduction in biodiversity and damaging the ecosystem. However, we can reduce this trend, either by reducing the impact, reducing the causes (like deforestation, dumping waste), or helping ecosystems withstand them.

One example of this practice is breeding programs, which help improve biodiversity. If we take endangered species and breed them in captivity, it will reduce the chance that they will go extinct, by building up their numbers. Hopefully, at some point, we can reintroduce them into the wild, and they will either merge with existing populations or even create a new one.

However, a major problem with breeding programs is that if the natural habitat of the endangered species isn’t safe, then reintroducing them into the wild will just result in their numbers declining again. So it is important to build up their numbers, but also establishing protected areas and rebuilding rare habitats essential to the species survival like mangroves and coral reefs.

The hope is that by protecting these habitats in the first place, we wouldn’t to breed as much in captivity because they are perfectly safe in the wild.

An important part of maintaining biodiversity is reducing impact of harmful but necessary practices like farming. Governments often help by making new laws and paying farmers to do the right thing. For example, around the field, there should be a field margin (a strip around the field where anything can grow, and also a hedgerow (which acts like a border). Both practices are being encouraged and should be encouraged by governments.

This practice revolves around a fundamental rule around increasing biodiversity, which is that protecting different habitats and food sources is essential to the survival of as many species as possible.

Governments actually regulate a lot of areas. They set quotas on how much deforestation is allowed each year, and also how much carbon dioxide can be released by businesses each year, all in the hope of reducing our footprint on the environment.

But individuals also have to take action. We should recycle stuff instead of throwing them in the bin, we shouldn’t by as much junk (considering that we can function without their existence). Both actions mean that there is less waste in landfills, which means that firstly, there is more undamaged land, and secondly, less toxic chemicals, reducing the amount that seeps into the land around it.

Although all these problems have solutions that may work (and will if we put them into action), there are a lot of barriers standing in the way of implementing them.

For starters, there is money. Protecting biodiversity is expensive, and individuals, companies, and governments often overlook how they would benefit from high biodiversity, so that precious money is often times spent elsewhere.

Another issue is that in order to maintain our current high standard of living, we have to damage the environment. We must use fertilizers to grow enough food for everyone, we have to mine deep to find precious metals for stuff like phones and other electronics.