Biodiversity and Conservation || Class-12 Biology

Biodiversity is defined as a term that includes all the different kinds of living organisms that one can find in a particular or certain area. This includes a variety of lifeforms such as plants, animals, microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and so on that make the natural world we live in. Here, the species work together in a so-called ecosystem for maintaining the required balance for their survival or for supporting life. Biodiversity is important due to many reasons, especially to mankind. Each species in biodiversity places an important role and has a certain value for its existence, it can be of worth to other organisms as well apart from humans.

Biodiversity to humans.

Biodiversity can benefit human beings as follows:

1. Economic: From an economic point of view, biodiversity can give humans various raw materials like plants, animals, and even microorganisms for the consumption and production of various useful products. Many living beings like farmers, fishers, and also those who work on timber are very much dependent on biodiversity for their livelihood.
2. Ecological life support: When it comes to life support biodiversity plays a crucial role in providing functioning ecosystems that can give ample amount of supply oxygen, also clean and healthy air and water, plants pollination, control of pests, organisms responsible for the treatment of wastewater and several other ecosystem services.
3. Recreation: Our unique biodiversity can create many aesthetic places which people can easily recreate for activities like hiking, camping, fishing as well as birdwatching. This also encourages the tourism department or industry to grow and hence this also depends on biodiversity.
4. Cultural: Biodiversity is also one where a particular or certain culture of a place is closely connected and with it, such places can express their identity, either spirituality or appreciation aesthetically. For example, the Indigenous Australians are known to have strong connections and obligations with the biodiversity that arises from their different spiritual beliefs related to plants and animals.
5. Scientific: Biodiversity can also give an idea of various data that can help various researchers to understand the natural world and how it originates scientifically.

Biodiversity Conservation

What is Biodiversity Conservation? Why is it important to conserve Biodiversity?

Biodiversity conservation is a term that refers to the act of protecting, uplifting, and managing the biodiversity for the purpose of deriving sustainable benefits for both the present and future generations or in other words it means protection and management of the biodiversity with the motive to obtain resources sustainably and not to degrade it.

It has three main objectives, and these are:

1. Preservation of the diversity of species.
2. Sustainable use of species and ecosystem.
3. Maintaining the systems that are supporting life and the systems that are essential for different ecological processes.

Species-Area relationships:

• It is the relationship between the area of a habitat, or even part of a habitat, including the number of species found within that area.
• It is found to be usually constructed for a single type of organism.
• It was observed by Alexander von Humboldt that within a region species richness increased with increasing explored area, but only up to a limit.
• Species diversity proves to be the number of diversity or the variety of species in a particular region.

Importance of conservation of Biodiversity

Conservation of biodiversity is important as it is biodiversity that provides various services as well as natural resources which are necessary for the existence or survival of various lifeforms on earth. Biodiversity also provides social benefits. The species of a particular area need to be protected as it is believed or heard that an area or environment that contains higher species abundance is likely to be more stable in comparison to an area or environment where the species abundance is very low. Further, the necessity of biodiversity can also be seen from our day-to-day dependence. The degree of our dependency on the environment is no doubt very high. Humans depend directly on various components of biodiversity i.e., species of plants and animals for our various needs as well as consumption. Same we also depend on microbes for several other reasons.

It is important to conserve biodiversity as it is being lost because of many reasons such as loss of habitat, the over-exploitation of natural resources, changes in the climate, pollution caused by various activities, diseases, hunting, and so on. Biodiversity provides us with many benefits economically and ethically and also adds aesthetic value to our surroundings therefore, it becomes important for us to conserve it.

Biodiversity Conservation Methods

The different methods in which biodiversity can be conserved are:

1. In-situ Conservation
2. Ex-situ Conservation

In-situ conservation: The in-situ method of conservation plays an important role in conserving the biodiversity within the natural habitat of various species of animals and plants. This can be done by creating areas that remain protected namely national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and so on.

Ex-situ conservation: This second method refers to conserving the biodiversity in the areas that are present outside their natural habitat. These areas include zoos, botanical gardens, and so on so forth.

Some important strategies that can be followed to conserve biodiversity are:

1. Various varieties of livestock, food, plants, microorganisms, timber, and various animals need to be conserved.
2. Organisms that are important economically should be identified and conserved.
3. Ecosystems should be preserved and use natural resources wisely.

Hunting should be strict and public awareness should be made.

Hey, I'm free freelancer author and write for my passion and for them who need some advice to excel in exams.