Quality of Life

Biodiversity is life Biodiversity is our life

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St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) March 27, 2006

Many factors affecting biodiversity are directly and indirectly related to agriculture and the need to produce more food for more people on limited arable land. “The priority is to feed the people, but we must do it in a way to keep as much biodiversity as possible,” says Klaus Ammann, former director of the Botanical Garden and an Honorary Professor Emeritus at the University of Berne, Switzerland.

Practices and technologies that increase the productivity of existing farmland is one way to help limit any negative impact on biodiversity. Critics often try to relate GM crops with negative impacts, yet the benefits of GM crops related to biodiversity are documented. “I have screened thousands of studies and scientific peer-reviewed papers and I have not seen single documentation of permanent negative impact on biodiversity done by genetically engineered crops. It’s a myth that this has happened,” continues Dr. Ammann in a new video and podcast available at http://www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/index.htm.

In fact, growers can more easily incorporate no-tillage practices with herbicide-tolerant GM crops, which generates improvements in soil life and fertility. Independent research and a decade of commercial scale usage also demonstrates that non-target insects are more abundant in insect-tolerant GM crops (Bt crops).

“I cannot understand why people are against this technology,” says Dr. Ammann, a member of the Biosafety Committee for Switzerland. “If we want to survive as human beings on this planet, we need to produce more food on smaller amounts of land. This is certainly done best with biotechnology. We cannot do that by just romantically following on old-fashioned agriculture. We must come to terms with using modern technology.”

Klaus Ammann’s exclusive interview can be found at Monsanto Company’s Conversations about Plant Biotechnology website: http:/www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/new.htm

Contact:

Michael Doane

+1-314-694-8351

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New York, NY (PRWEB) May 21, 2010

May 22, 2010 is the International Day for Biological Diversity (IDB) which has been celebrated annually since 1994. This year’s observance is particularly special as the United Nations has proclaimed 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) to celebrate and promote efforts to safeguard the variety of life on earth. On this occasion, ECOSTASY is pleased and proud to announce a collaboration with 2010 International Year of Biodiversity to raise awareness and support efforts to promote biodiversity.    

On our site ecostasy.com, we are pleased to offer the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity t-shirt, officially endorsed by the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Environment Programme. All profits from t-shirt sales will be donated to a leading environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in Brazil. Please join us in supporting IYB and important environmental protection efforts with the purchase of this great looking and feeling organic cotton t-shirt with the official IYB logo. This is one of a few initiatives ECOSTASY will launch in support of IYB in the coming months.

ECOSTASY’s mission is inextricably linked to biodiversity and pays tribute to the world’s most biodiverse country – Brazil. ECOSTASY is based in New York City, but aims for a global impact with its distinctive collection of sustainable designs, principally from Brazil. Our personal accessories, including jewelry and handbags, and home décor objects are hand-made from natural and renewable materials such as palm fibers, seeds, silk, natural and recycled fabrics, cork and responsibly managed wood.

ECOSTASY buys directly from innovative designers to artisans and indigenous communities in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest working harmoniously with nature. ECOSTASY expands the market for their goods and raises cultural and environmental awareness through our highly informational conscious commerce destination. We also showcase inspiring images of biodiversity on our website and are delighted to collaborate with internationally renowned nature photographer Luiz Claudio Marigo whose images bring us closer to Brazil’s magnificent biodiversity.

ECOSTASY was launched in 2010 by Katherine Ponte after working as a lawyer and banker. Katherine pursued this mission inspired by her rich experiences living in Brazil and life-long appreciation for nature and handcrafted objects. Katherine received a BA at the University of Western Ontario, a law degree at Osgoode Hall Law School and an MBA from the Wharton School.

Please visit us at www.ecostasy.com and direct any inquiries to info(at)ecostasy(dot)com.

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Arlington, VA (Vocus) September 19, 2008

A new study published today in the journal SCIENCE finds that World Bank projects that included biodiversity goals were as successful in achieving their development objectives, including poverty reduction and private sector development, as projects that focused solely on development.

The research, conducted by Nature Conservancy chief scientist Peter Kareiva and Santa Clara University Professor Michelle Marvier, challenges the notion that there are trade-offs between protecting the environment and alleviating poverty.

“Ultimately, there is no reason to pursue a development project without also including attention to biodiversity concerns,” concluded Kareiva. “Nothing is lost by incorporating environmental objectives into development work, but in contrast we do suffer environmental consequences if biodiversity is not included as part of a development project.”

There are a multitude of opinions on how conservation and development projects should work together, but this latest research used existing World Bank measures to further address the issue beyond just anecdotal arguments.

Since 1947, The World Bank has loaned hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries, working to reduce global poverty and improve living standards around the globe. Pulling from The World Bank’s database of 11,000 projects, Kareiva and Marvier chose nearly 200 projects, half of which were focused on development only, the other half focused on development as the primary goal with environmental sustainability and/or biodiversity protection as secondary goals. These two project types were also matched by country to ensure that geographic biases were not a factor.

Among the findings of the project outcomes analyzed:

    When biodiversity goals were added to a project, the addition did not reduce that project’s likelihood of meeting its development objectives, including things like gender equity, poverty alleviation and private sector development.
    However, if a project lacked conservation goals, its performance with respect to the environment was significantly reduced.
    Biodiversity and development projects that incorporated sustainable financing and market mechanisms were found to be more successful than projects that did not include these factors.
    Melding conservation and development goals is not a panacea for solving environmental and poverty issues, but scientists and statisticians must continue expanding research and analysis to determine the best approaches to addressing these concerns.

These findings add to analyses that other organizations have done in regards to conservation and poverty issues in World Bank projects, and the authors hope this study can serve to advance the debate and discussions surrounding the marriage of conservation and poverty work around the world.

As a leading conservation organization, and World Bank partner, The Nature Conservancy is engaged in research and projects that help understand the linkages between poverty alleviation and conservation and strengthen our efforts to achieve both of these important goals.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 18 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 117 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

Contact

Cristina Mestre, 703.841.8779

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Introduction to Biodiversity

In this article we will give a definition of biodiversity, discuss the distribution of biodiversity with three illustrative examples from South Africa, Brazil and Madagascar before commenting on the human benefits. The term was used first by wildlife scientist and conservationist Raymond F. Dasmann in a book advocating nature conservation.

Definition

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or on the entire Earth. Biodiversity is often used as a measure of the health of biological systems. The biodiversity found on Earth today consists of many millions of distinct biologicalspecies. The year 2010 has been declared as the International Year of Biodiversity. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth, but is consistently rich in the tropics and in specific localized regions such as the Cape Floristic Province; it is less rich in polar regions where fewer species are found. Rapid environmental modifications typically cause extinctions. Of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct. Since life began on Earth, five major mass extinctions have led to large and sudden drops in the biodiversity of species.

The Phanerozoic eon (the last 540 million years) marked a rapid growth in biodiversity in theCambrian explosion—a period during which nearly every phylum of multicellular organisms first appeared. The next 400 million years was distinguished by periodic, massive losses of biodiversity classified as mass extinction events. The most recent, theCretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago, and has attracted more attention than all others because it killed the dinosaurs.

Today there is concern that the period since the emergence of humans is part of a mass reduction in biodiversity, the Holocene extinction, caused primarily by the impact humans are having on the environment, particularly the destruction of plant and animalhabitats. In addition, human practices have caused a loss of genetic biodiversity. The relevance of biodiversity to human health is becoming a major international issue, as scientific evidence is gathered on the global health implications of biodiversity loss.

Biologists most often define biodiversity as the “totality of genes, species, and ecosystems of a region”. An advantage of this definition is that it seems to describe most circumstances and present a unified view of the traditional three levels at which biological variety has been identified : 1) species diversity 2) ecosystem diversity and 3) genetic diversity. But Professor Anthony Campbell at Cardiff University, UK and the Darwin Centre, Pembrokeshire, has defined a fourth, and critical one: Molecular Diversity

Distribution

Nevertheless, biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is consistently richer in the tropics and in other localized regions such as the Cape Floristic Province – please see example one below. As one approaches polar regions one generally finds fewer species. Flora and fauna diversity depends on climate, altitude, soils and the presence of other species. In the year 2006 large numbers of the Earth’s species were formally classified as rare or endangered orthreatened species; moreover, many scientists have estimated that there are millions more species actually endangered which have not yet been formally recognized.

About 40 percent of the 40,177 species assessed using the IUCN Red List criteria, are now listed as threatened species with extinction – a total of 16,119 species. Even though biodiversity declines from the equator to the poles in terrestrial ecoregions, whether this is so in aquatic ecosystems is still a hypothesis to be tested, especially in marine ecosystems where causes of this phenomenon are unclear. Please see Dr Simon Harding’s articles on marine, life, ocean formation and food webs in the sea. In addition, particularly in marine ecosystems, there are several well stated cases where diversity in higher latitudes actually increases. Therefore, the lack of information on biodiversity of Tropics and Polar Regions prevents scientific conclusions on the distribution of the world’s aquatic biodiversity.

Lets us now consider three examples of biodiversity:

Example One Cape Floristic Province

Location and description

The Region covers the Mediterranean climate region of South Africa in the Western Cape in the southwestern corner of the country, and extends eastward into the Eastern Cape, a transitional zone between the winter-rainfall region to the west and the summer-rainfall region to the east in KwaZulu-Natal. Most of the region is covered with fynbos, a sclerophyllous shrubland occurring on acid sands or nutrient poor soils derived from Table Mountain Sandstones (Cape Supergroup). Fynbos is home to an amazing diversity of plant species including many members of the Protea family (Proteaceae), Heath family (Ericaceae), and Reed family of restios (Restionaceae). Other vegetation types are strandveld, a soft coastal scrubland found mostly on the west-facing coast of the Western Cape Province, on tertiary sands.

Renosterveld is a grassy shrubland dominated by members of the Daisy family (Asteraceae - particularly renosterbos, graminoids and geophytes, occurring on the base-rich shaley soils of the coastal forelands. Small pockets of Afromontane forest  can be found in humid and sheltered areas.

Example Two – Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is considered a hotspot of biodiversity and contains roughly 20,000 plant species, 1350 vertebrates, and millions of insects, about half of which occur nowhere else in the world.

The Atlantic Forest (Portuguese: ’Mata Atlântica’) is a region of tropical and subtropical moist forest, tropical dry forest, tropical savannas, and mangrove forests which extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the north to Rio Grande do Sulstate in the south, and inland as far as Paraguay and the Misiones Province of Argentina.

The Atlantic Forest region includes forests of several variations. 1) The coastal restingas are low forests which grow on stabilized coastal dunes. 2) The coastal forests, also known as Atlantic moist forests, are evergreen tropical forests with structures. 3) Inland are the interior forests, also known as the Atlantic semi-deciduous forests, where many trees drop their leaves during the dry season. 4) Further inland are the Atlantic dry forests, which form a transition between the arid Caatinga to the northeast and the Cerrado savannas to the east. 5) Montane moist forests occur in the Serra do Mar and across the mountains and plateaus of southern Brazil, and are home to Araucaria and evergreen trees of the laurel (Lauraceae) and myrtle (Myrtaceae) families. 6) Shrubby montane savannas occur at the highest elevations. The Atlantic Forest is unusual in that it extends as a true tropical rainforest to latitudes as high as 24°S. This is because the trade winds produce precipitation throughout the southern winter. In fact, the northern Zona da Mata of northeastern Brazil receives much more rainfall between May and August than during the southern summer. The Dunas Park in Rio Grande do Norte is one of the largest units of conservation of atlantic forest in Brazil. The Atlantic Forest is now designated a World Biosphere Reserve, which contains a large number of highly endangered species including the well known marmosets and lion tamarins. It has been extensively cleared since colonial times, mainly for the farming of sugar cane and for urban settlements. The remnant is estimated to be less than 10% of the original and that is often broken into hilltop islands.

Example Three Madagascar

The island of Madagascar including the unique Madagascar dry deciduous forests and lowland rainforests possess a very high ratio of species endemism and biodiversity, since the island separated from mainland Africa 65 million years ago, most of the species and ecosystems have evolved independently producing unique species different from those in other parts of Africa. Madagascar’s long isolation from the neighboring continents has resulted in a unique mix of plants and animals, many found nowhere else in the world; some ecologists refer to Madagascar as the “eighth continent”.  Of the 10,000 plants native to Madagascar, 90% are found nowhere else in the world. Madagascar’s varied fauna and flora are endangered by human activity, as a third of its native vegetation has disappeared since the 1970s, and only 18% remains intact. Since the arrival of humans 2000 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90% of its original forest.

The elephant birds, which were giant ratites native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Aepyornis was the world’s largest bird, believed to have been over 3 metres (10 ft) tall. Most lemurs are listed as endangered or threatened species. Many species have gone extinct in the last centuries, mainly due to habitat destruction and hunting. The eastern, or windward side of the island is home to tropical rainforests, while the western and southern sides, which lie in the rain shadow of the central highlands, are home to tropical dry forests, thorn forests, and deserts and xeric shrublands. Madagascar’s dry deciduous rain forest has been preserved generally better than the eastern rainforests or the high central plateau, presumably due to historically low population densities. Madagascar has several national parks.

Human benefits of biodiversity

Biodiversity also supports a number of natural ecosystem processes and services. Some ecosystem services that benefit society are air quality,climate (both global CO2 sequestration and local), water purification, pollination, and prevention of erosion. Since the stone age, species loss has been accelerated above the geological rate by human activity.

The rate of species extinction is difficult to estimate, but it has been estimated that species are now being lost at a rate approximately 100 times as fast as is typical in the geological record, or perhaps as high as 10 000 times as fast. To feed such a large population, more land is being transformed from wilderness with wildlife into agricultural, mining, lumbering, and urban areas for humans. Non-material benefits that are obtained from ecosystems include spiritual and aesthetic values, knowledge systems and the value of education.

Agriculture

The economic value of the reservoir of genetic traits present in wild varieties and traditionally grown landraces is extremely important in improving crop performance. Important crops, such as the potato and coffee, are often derived from only a few genetic strains. Improvements in crop plants over the last 250 years have been largely due to harnessing the genetic diversity present in wild and domestic crop plants. Interbreeding crops strains with different beneficial traits has resulted in more than doubling crop production in the last 50 years as a result of the Green Revolution. For more information on agriculture please see Dr Simon Harding’s introductory article in this series.

Crop diversity is also necessary to help the system recover when the dominant crop type is attacked by a disease. We can look at three examples of this: 1) The Irish potato blight of 1846, which was a major factor in the deaths of a million people and migration of another million, was the result of planting only two potato varieties, both of which were vulnerable. 2) When rice grassy stunt virus struck rice fields from Indonesia to India in the 1970s, 6273 varieties were tested for resistance. One was found to be resistant, an Indian variety, known to science only since 1966. This variety formed a hybrid with other varieties and is now widely grown. 3) Coffee rust attacked coffee plantations in Sri Lanka, Brazil, and Central America in 1970. A resistant variety was found in Ethiopia. Although the diseases are themselves a form of biodiversity.

Monoculture, the lack of biodiversity, was a contributing factor to several agricultural disasters in history, the European wine industry collapse in the late 1800s, and the US Southern Corn Leaf Blight epidemic of 1970. Higher biodiversity also controls the spread of certain diseases as pathogens will need to adapt to infect different species. Biodiversity provides food for humans. Although about 80 percent of our food supply comes from just 20 kinds of plants such as rice and wheat, humans use at least 40,000 species of plants and animals a day. Many people around the world depend on these species for their food, shelter, and clothing.

There is untapped potential for increasing the range of food products suitable for human consumption, provided that the high present extinction rate can be stopped.

Human health

The relevance of biodiversity to human health is becoming a major international political issue, as scientific evidence builds on the global health implications of biodiversity loss. This issue is closely linked with the issue of climate change, as many of the anticipated health risks of climate change are associated with changes in biodiversity (e.g. changes in populations and distribution of disease vectors, scarcity of fresh water, impacts on agricultural biodiversity and food resources etc.). Some of the health issues influenced by biodiversity include dietary health and nutrition security, infectious diseases, medical science and medicinal resources, social and psychological health. Biodiversity is also known to have an important role in reducing disaster risk, and in post-disaster relief and recovery efforts. One of the key health issues associated with biodiversity is that of drug discovery and the availability of medicinal resources.

A significant proportion of drugs are derived, directly or indirectly, from biological sources; Chivian and Bernstein report that at least 50% of the pharmaceutical compounds on the market in the US are derived from natural compounds found in plants, animals, and microorganisms, while about 80% of the world population depends on medicines from nature (used in either modern or traditional medical practice) for primary healthcare. Moreover, only a tiny proportion of the total diversity of wild species has been investigated for potential sources of new drugs. Please see Dr Simon Harding’s introductory article on botanicals in this series for more information.

It has been argued, based on evidence from market analysis and biodiversity science, that the decline in output from the pharmaceutical sector since the mid-1980s can be attributed to a move away from natural product exploration (“bioprospecting”) in favour of R&D programmes based on genomics and synthetic chemistry, neither of which have yielded the expected product outputs; meanwhile, there is evidence that natural product chemistry can provide the basis for innovation which can yield significant economic and health benefits. Marine ecosystems are of particular interest in this regard, however unregulated and inappropriate bioprospecting can be considered a form of over-exploitation which has the potential to degrade ecosystems and increase biodiversity loss, as well as impacting on the rights of the communities and states from which the resources are taken.

Business and Industry

A wide range of industrial materials are derived directly from biological resources. These include building materials, fibers, dyes, resirubber and oil. There is enormous potential for further research into sustainably utilizing materials from a wider diversity of organisms. In addition, biodiversity and the ecosystem goods and services it provides are considered to be fundamental to healthy economic systems.

The degree to which biodiversity supports business varies between regions and between economic sectors, however the importance of biodiversity to issues of resource security (water quantity and quality, timber, paper and fibre, food and medicinal resources etc.) are increasingly recognized as universal. As a result, the loss of biodiversity is increasingly recognized as a significant risk factor in business development and a threat to long term economic sustainability. A number of case studies recently compiled by the World Resources Institute demonstrate some of these risks as identified by specific industries.

Other ecological services

Biodiversity provides many ecosystem services that are often not readily visible. It plays a part in regulating the chemistry of our atmosphere and water supply.

Biodiversity is directly involved in water purification, recycling nutrients and providing fertile soils. Experiments with controlled environments have shown that humans cannot easily build ecosystems to support human needs; for example insect pollination cannot be mimicked by human-made construction, and that activity alone represents tens of billions of dollars in ecosystem services per year to humankind. The stability of ecosystems is also related to biodiversity, with higher biodiversity producing greater stability over time, reducing the chance that ecosystem services will be disrupted as a result of disturbances such as extreme weather events or human exploitation.

Leisure, cultural and aesthetic value

Many people derive value from biodiversity through leisure activities such as hiking,birdwatching or natural history study. Biodiversity has inspired musicians, painters, sculptors, writers and other artists. Many culture groups view themselves as an integral part of the natural world and show respect for other living organisms. Popular activities such as gardening, caring for aquariums and collecting butterflies are all strongly dependent on biodiversity. The number of species involved in such pursuits is in the tens of thousands, though the great majority do not enter mainstream commercialism. The relationships between the original natural areas of these often ‘exotic’ animals and plants and commercial collectors, suppliers, breeders, propagators and those who promote their understanding and enjoyment are complex and poorly understood. It seems clear, however, that the general public responds well to exposure to rare and unusual organisms—they recognize their inherent value at some level. A family outing to the botanical garden or zoo is as much an aesthetic or cultural experience as it is an educational one. Philosophically it could be argued that biodiversity has intrinsic aesthetic and spiritual value to mankind in and of itself.

This idea can be used as a counterweight to the notion that tropical forests and other ecological realms are only worthy of conservation because they may contain medicines or useful products. Conclusion We can see from the above examples that an understanding of biodiversity is fundamental to the survival of the entire planet – not only physically but also culturally. Number of species, threats to biodiversity, destruction of habitat , exotic species, genetic pollution, climate change, and means of conservation will be discussed in part two of this series.

Dr Simon Harding

www.chronosconsulting.com

www.coberongreen.com

Related Biodiversity Articles

Human Threats to Biodiversity

The term biodiversity refers to the wide range of organisms, plants and animals that exist within any given geographical region. That region may consist of a plot of land no more than a few square meters or yards, a whole continent, or the entire planet. Most commonly, discussions of biodiversity consider all the organisms that interact with each other in an extended geographical region, such as a tropical rain forest or a subtropical desert. Concerns about biodiversity are relatively new. Only during the last quarter of the twentieth century did scientists begin to appreciate the vast number of organisms found on Earth and the complex ways in which they interact with each other and with their environments. Biologists have now discovered and named about 1.7 million distinct species of plants and animals. As many as 50 million species, however, are thought to exist.

Biodiversity in the tropics is of special interest since the richness of species found there is so great. According to some estimates, 90 percent of all plant, animal, and insect species exist in tropical regions. At the same time, surveys of organisms in the tropics have been very limited. Those studies that have been conducted provide only a hint of the range of life that may exist there. As an example, one study of a 108-square kilometer (42-square mile) reserve of dry forest in Costa Rica found about 700 plant species, 400 vertebrate species, and 13,000 species of insects. Included among the latter group were 3,140 species of moths and butterflies alone.

One reason for the growing interest in biodiversity is the threat that human activities may pose for plant and animal species. As humans take over more land for agriculture, cities, highways, and other uses, natural habitats are seriously disrupted. Whole populations may be destroyed, upsetting the balance of nature that exists in an area. The loss of a single plant, for example, may result in the loss of animals that depend on that plant for food. The loss of those animals may, in turn, result in the loss of predators that prey on those animals. As human populations grow, the threat to biodiversity will continue to grow with it. And as more people place greater stress on the natural environment, greater will be the loss of resources plant and animal communities need to survive.

Maintaining biodiversity in a region and across the planet is important for a number of reasons. First, some people argue that all species— because they exist—have a right to continue to exist in their own natural habitats, untouched by human development. Second, humans depend on many of the plants and animals that make up an ecological community. For example, one-quarter of all the prescription drugs in the United States contain ingredients obtained from plants. And third, humans themselves benefit from the interaction among organisms in a biologically diverse community: plants help clean the water and air, provide oxygen in the atmosphere, and control erosion. Biodiversity keeps the planet habitable and ecosystems functional.

One of the great issues in environmental science today is how biodiversity can be preserved both in specific geographical regions and across the planet. One proposal that has been made involves the use of ecological reserves. Ecological reserves are protected areas established for the preservation of habitats of endangered species, threatened ecological communities, or representative examples of widespread communities. By the end of the 1990s, there were about 7,000 protected areas globally with an area of 651 million hectares (1.6 billion acres). Of this total, about 2,400 sites comprising 379 million hectares (936 million acres) were fully protected and could be considered to be true ecological reserves.

Ideally, the design of a national system of ecological reserves would provide for the longer-term protection of all native species and their natural communities including terrestrial, freshwater, and marine (saltwater) systems. So far, however, no country has put in place a comprehensive system of ecological reserves to fully protect its natural biodiversity. Moreover, in many cases existing reserves are relatively small and are threatened by environmental change, illegal poaching of animals and plants, and tourism.

The World Conservation Union, World Resources Institute, and United Nations Environment Program are three important agencies whose purpose is to conserve and protect the world’s biodiversity. These agencies have developed the Global Biodiversity Strategy, an international program to help protect plant and animal habitats for this and future generations. Because this program began only in the late 1970s, it is too early to evaluate its success. However, the existence of this comprehensive international effort is encouraging, as is the participation of most of Earth’s countries, representing all stages of economic development.

Biodiversity in Ecuador

Ecuador is a rich country when it comes to biodiversity. Even though Ecuador is only the size of the state of Nevada, its biodiversity exceeds the one from the United States in total. According to the World Resource Institute Ecuador is one of the few countries on earth categorized as “megadiverse,” owing to the variety of its ecosystems and species.

Within three hours, you can drive in Ecuador from arctic tundra to sweltering beaches, from a temperate pine forest to a tropical wet forest, from a desert landscape to wetlands filled with mangroves. Ecuador is also the most ethnically diversified country in Latin America, a home to large Arab, Asian, Caucasian, African, and Jewish populations. In the Native Indian population, one can find tribes living in very primitive conditions, from those who were recently head shrinkers to the most entrepreneurial otavalenos, known around the globe for the quality of their textiles.

According to the Natura Foundation, an environmental non governmental organization (NGO), approximately 50 percent of Ecuador is suffering from various degrees of soil erosion, and deforestation is 45 percent in the lowlands, 48 percent in the highlands, and 8 percent in the Amazon basin. Thousands of acres of forest disappear daily, despite laws that prohibit the cutting down of trees and the exportation of wood. It has been calculated that deforestation amounts to 680,000 acres per year (approximately 2,000 per day), and in less that forty years not a single forest will remain.

We can certainly say that biodiversity in Ecuador is decreasing rapidly. Several aspects of the society are to blame. Mainly the lack of enforcement of laws and the corruption by the government seem to have a great affect on the preservation of the countries most valuable treasure. The lack of insight in small communities who own large parts of natural habitat of animals is also a threat. Preservation of the biological diversity can be achieved by educating these communities and stimulating ecotourism, or sustainable development.

Biodiversity is all around us! In this video we introduce you to the concept of biodiversity. It is more than just the total number of species, however. It describes diversity at all levels from genetic diversity to ecosystem diversity. Yet we are loosing biodiversity. We pose the question, “What can each of us do to help save what is left?” See more and get lesson plans from www.thewildclassroom.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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