Lillian Liem 6S 26

Date: 19-01-2004

What are the important to maintain biodiversity and the conservation of wildlife and their habitats. Suggest ways to protect the endangered species.

The important of maintain biodiversity, conservation of wildlife and their habitats.

The reasons of important of maintaining biodiversity are divided into several aspects, such as ecological and biological, economic and medicinal and moral.

The important of biodiversity in the scope of biology and ecology includes several points. The organisms in an ecosystem are interdependent. Each species forms important parts of food chains and plays a specific role in the ecosystem. For example, herbivores consume producers and transfer energy and essential nutrients to carnivores, and detritivores speed up the cycling processes of essential materials. This maintains a self-sufficient ecosystem. The diversity of ecosystem is biologically important. It is because organisms usually live in particular types of habitats, where the physical factors are suitable for them to survive. On the other aspects, nearly 90% of food crops are domesticated from wild tropical plants. Plants breeders and farmers rely on their genetic diversity to improve crop yield, develop new crop strains, and increase the resistance of crops to pests and diseases. About 80% of the world’s population relies on plants and plant extracts as medicines, which are called herbal medicines. As we believe, every wild species has an inherent tight to exist or to struggle for survival without human interference, just like every human being has the right to survive. In other words, each species has its intrinsic value on the Earth, irrespective of its usefulness to human. Therefore, humans have no right to kill wildlife or disturb their survival.

Wetlands, meadows, marshes and mangroves provide habitats for wildlife, keep air fresh, remove pollutants and provide flood control. The protection of these habitats is important to the maintenance of biodiversity too.

Ways to protect the endangered species.

There are two main approaches to manage wildlife and save organisms from extinction: the ecological approach and species approach.

The ecological approach focuses on the maintenance of biological diversity in the natural environment, because the natural ecosystem offer the best strategy for long-term protection and survival of organisms. Great attention is placed on the identification and protection of sites with a large variety of organisms of organisms. Threatened species are resettled in more secure and protected habitats. The major obstacle to the ecological approach is the increasing demands on land for agricultural, industrial and urban activities.

The species approach focuses on the conservation of biological diversity in human-controlled settings. The general practices include artificial breeding of endangered species in zoos and cultivating crops seeds that are genetically diversed from the wild species. Many zoos and botanic gardens have been set up for carrying out artificial breeding. This increase the populations of endangered species. Most of the conservation efforts are concentrated on species that have comparatively better chances of survival, higher ecological values to the ecosystem, and greater potential for agricultural, medicinal and industrial uses.