Biodiversity
Earth is home to millions of different species, but only one dominates. Us, the Homo sapiens. Our intellect, innovations and activities have altered our planet. Our cleverness, our ideations, and our activities now drive all the global problems we face.
Since the beginning of Homo sapiens, we have greatly altered the supply of nutrients, the environmental composition, and diversity. During this time we have continuously added so much pressure that, in the next century, we may fall out of the envelope of which many species evolved. Humans now appropriate more than a third of all terrestrial primary production and have destroyed significant portions of some types of ecosystems. Under these environment modifications, species extinction may be even more prevalent than habitat destruction. Humans are consistently draining the planet of its resource, and effecting us all.
Falling levels of nutrients in soil, atmospheric CO2, pathogens, and climate are all at risk, and extinction will occur as there will be a limit on species as to who is the superior competitor, and would displace other species from that region. For each species, there is a dominant competitor for their realized niche. The concepts of niches define the approaches to competition, coexistence, and community structure and summarize history. An issue is that human-caused environmental changes could create “vacant niches”, novel crevices of environmental conditions of which no species is properly adapted. The importance of evolutionary vs. community ecology reactions to environmental change would rely on the regional and local recruitment limitation, and on whether human-imposed constraints were novel regionally, or continental or global scales.
Climate chan...
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...cation of livestock and plants have completely altered our relationship with other species. Throughout history we have used animal resources without contemplating the total cost; even with this knowledge, we still have poachers hunting elephants and walruses for their ivory tusks.
Less direct human-caused biodiversity loss is found in the relocation of species to other places.
The international concern for the mass extinction of species has been agreed end upon since the 1990s when UNEP submitted an agreement to UNCED to establish protected areas and set regulations to limit the negative effects humans have upon biodiversity. Since then, 168 countries have signed, creating movement for a large step forward in the perseverance of biodiversity; however, implementing these policies has been difficult in mainly periphery countries due to their economic development
The eradication of species numbers average at a toll close to one hundred percent of earths total living creatures. “It is the Earth's most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct” (Sahney, and Benton 759). Not only where marine and terrestrial species effected but this catastrophic event is the only recogni...
Biodiversity is influenced by landscape fragmentation at various scales of space and time. The extinction of ecosystem types and component species may cause an increased patchiness of the landscape, resulting in lower population sizes and decreased connectivity. As a result, inhabitants may experience decreased dispersal abilities and lowered gene flows between populations.
Through millions of years of evolution, well-balanced habitats have co-evolved to provide for the wide variety of species and their needs. Trees have adapted to weeds, weeds have adapted to the predation from herbivores, and so on up the food chain. Similar scenarios are seen throughout the world. Through the process of natural selection, specific species or broad species families will go extinct. However, these occurrences have largely been due to the natural flow and evolution of time. It wasn’t until recently that dominant species, such as humans, have taken the course of nature into their own hands.
Extinction is no longer just a natural process. It is an enemy, slowly changing our world into a barren wasteland where life is as rare as a flower in the Arctic Circle's winter. The wolf, the tiger, the caribou, the elephant, the bison, the cheetah, the sequoia cactus, the redwood tree – all of these and so many more things are on the verge of disappearing from our planet forever. Extinction is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, because if it continues the way it is going without anything being done to counteract its causes and consequences, there will soon be no environment left for there to be debates about.
Long-term survival of a species depends on its ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions (Murphy, 1994). Genetic diversity within a species, which has taken 3.5 billion years to evolve, makes adaptations to these changing environments possible. Unfortunately, the rate of extinction of genetically diverse organisms is rapidly increasing, thus reducing this needed biodiversity, largely due to the human impacts of development and expansion. What was an average of one extinction per year before is now one extinction per hour and extinct species numbers are expected to reach approximately one million by the year 2000 (WWW site, Bio 65). As a result governmental and societal action must be taken immediately!
By carelessly shifting around organisms, with their awesome genetic potential, we have caused major ecological disasters. Gone is the most important tree in the Northeast, the American Chestnut, our premier landscaping tree, the American Elm, and gone are huge tracts of productive fresh water marsh. Now these marshes contain only monocultures (only one species present) of purple loosestrife.
The Convention on Biological Diversity (hereafter: “CBD”) is an international treaty adopted by United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and came into force on December 29, 1993. Initially when it came into force there were 168 members now it is 193 in total. The aim to protect biodiversity and the dramatic steps taken for conservation, sustainable use and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits attracted the world communities to become members (History of the Convention, n.d). In principle the convention on biological diversity changed the ownership concept of biodiversity protection i.e. (“common heritage of humankind”) to the “sovereign right” of each member country (Hirsch, 2012). It is the responsibility of the each member to develop and implement policies in a way that helps in the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources. It also recognizes the knowledge of local and indigenous people for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity (Brahmi et al., 2004).The article 8(j) of CBD has an important provision which gives the member state rights to “respect, preserve and maintain” traditional style and knowledge about the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. The protection must promote the wider application of such knowledge and stimulate innovation and also ensure that the benefits are shared in fair and equitable manner to the communities.
On the first level, when foreign, but previously non-invasive species is first introduced to a new area, the new species may play a role in a community that was previously unfulfilled; it may fill a vacant niche in the ecosystem. Originally this new species may be seen as a useful contributor to its new surroundings because it has only (temporarily) increased biodiversity in the area (Meinesz, 2003).
NEED AND PURPOSE FOR CONSERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY Biodiversity conservation is about saving life on Earth in all its forms and keeping natural ecosystems functioning and healthy. Biodiversity is being depleted by the loss of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, over exploitation of resources, human sponsored ecosystems, climatic changes, pollution, invasive exotic species, diseases, shifting cultivation, poaching of wildlife etc. Since the human beings are enjoying all the benefits from biodiversity, they should take proper care for the preservation of biodiversity in all its forms and should prevent the degradation as well as the destruction of the habitats, thereby maintaining the biodiversity at its optimum level which will ultimately conserve the biodiversity for the future generation. The United Nations designated 2011-2020 as the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity. In biodiversity, each species, no matter how big or small, has an important role to play in ecosystems.
== = = Human beings are dependent on the Earth's diversity of species for our survival. Wild species play a vital role in the maintenance of the planets ecological functions, yet everyday on the planet 40-100 species become extinct.
The ecological consequences of global climate change are expected to be drastic although not much is known as to how individual species will react to these changes. Irrespective of the causes of climate change, whether anthropogenic or natural, it is imperative that we address these concerns, as they will have widespread impacts on the human species, both directly and indirectly through forcings on other species. The climate is not expected to shift evenly and the ways in which certain species adapt or migrate due to these changes could be erratic and unpredictable. The rate at which the earth’s climate is currently changing is unprecedented and has not been seen in the past 450,000 years. Although many species have simply migrated northward or vertically up mountainsides to escape warming habitats, others do not have this luxury or cannot migrate fast enough to survive. The earth’s temperature has risen by over one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, based on land and sea level measurements. The temperature is expected to continue rising at a faster pace over the next century, possibly increasing by as much as seven degrees Celsius. In comparison, the earth’s average global temperature was only twelve degrees cooler than it is now during the last great ice age. A vast majority of species now living do so within a narrow spectrum of temperature ranges and will not be able to adapt to a warming climate on such a large scale. If humans are the cause of a warming climate we will ultimately be responsible for the destruction of millions of species.
Biodiversity loss can lead to extinction, and hurt human life. It is our responsibility to take care of the environment. We bring in machines that harm the environment and destroy animal life. We need to limit ourselves on how much land and resources we consume. There are major issues that are causing species to become extinct and hurt our way of life and other animals do to the change in food chain.
Nowadays it is common to read articles in newspapers and magazines regarding biodiversity issues. Human beings have been knowingly and unknowingly destroying biodiversity since their existence. Biodiversity is the measure of the variety of species of animals living in an area. Forests are usually areas with high biodiversity while deserts are the opposite. Human beings have always destroyed biodiversity either by deforestation, or by some other means. Biodiversity depletion is a natural phenomenon. But the present levels of biodiversity depletion are many times higher than the natural rate. Recently the levels of loss in biodiversity have started causing global concern. Some of the main causes for loss in biodiversity are alteration of habitats, increasing levels of pollution and human population growth.
Everyone’s all seen those wildlife shows on tv. The shows on National Geographic and such, showing animals in beautiful environments, everything lush and growing and nothing at all wrong that could threaten these creatures and places. But, have anyone seen the other side? The side where all these beautiful creatures and plants starve, are decimated by predators that have never been there before, and sometime even become poisoned by their very own homes and habitats? Of course no one has. That doesn’t mean that its not happening. It is happening, and its happening everywhere. And guess who is to blame? People. Society. Humans as a race pollute the environment, hunt animals simply for their parts, fish way more than humans will ever need just for the sake of money, introduce new species to new places for our own gain, and even purposefully destroy entire regions just for human expansion. And its starting to take its toll. While it is true that nature is constantly in flux and certain species come and go, humans are causing more species to disappear in the past few hundred years then nature has ever caused since the age of the dinosaurs, and therefore it is up to humans to repair the damage caused, be it cleaning the environment and habitats of these creatures, or taking more direct action to protect and preserve the species that are on the brink of extinction.
Overpopulation can be seen as one of the key factors responsible for the state of our rapidly decaying earth. Developments in medicine, agriculture and technology have allowed for the human race to take over all other species and be excluded from the natural food chain. Humans, particularly westerners, lead lives of extreme consumption that take huge tolls not only on the earth but also on certain groups within society. A great division has developed between the western world and the third world.