Does biodiversity matter ?

Question

Ok, the saliant points as I see them,

1. Asthetics and knowledge for its own sake (the world seems like a better place with wilderness and varied animals) 2. Technological advancement (new medicines, perfumes, tastes can be discovered, as well as inspiring technologies). Most primary forest ecosystems have barely been explored. 3. Collapse of certain key species could precipitate the collapse of a whole ecosystem. The possible ramifications for humanity could be a loss of services that we require to survive. For example desertification.

The issues are 1. Most endangered environments are in the poorest regions of the world where people can barely get enough food to eat, and fall easy victim to preditors and elephants. 2. Corporations are being prevented from making large profits from wood or other natural resources. 3. Poor people need farmland, bush meat and wood to feed themselves, the only place to get these resources is their surroundings.

Answer 1

It matters because for ecosystem resilience, you need functional redundancy. The more species you have performing the same trophic level functions, the more resistant your ecosystem will be to their loss.
Corporations are making enormous profits off of natural resources. And the main problems driving extinctions are not poor people who practice subsistence farming and hunting; it's overfishing by large wealthier nations and environmental causes, like ocean warming. Endangered environments are pretty much everywhere, though a lot of them are endangered not so much by habitat loss as by changing climates and the introduction of invasive species that outcompete native species.

Answer 2

Hi. Kiddo has the right idea. Diversity in the ecosystem, emphasis on SYSTEM, means more possible ways to diverge and survive. One example is the USA's dependence on vast fields of hybrid grain, both as a food source and a fuel source in the future, which could be wiped out by a single virus or other blight. Not a happy situation. In a diverse agricultural system (a more natural state of affairs) the evolving or mutation of a single virus would only harm one element of the system, not a vast expanse of a single crop.

Answer 3

Only if you want the Earth to survive after you are gone. Biodiversity is essentially the key to life adapting to changing circumstances; If you have a diverse range of insects, even if some calamitous event happens that changes the environment, some of them will be suited to that changed environment and insect life will go on. The same holds true for all forms of life.