Source: Raw Shorty

9. Biodiversity


9.1 Background

What is biodiversity and why is it important?

Biodiversity is the term we use to describe the variety of all life and living processes in the environment. It includes all the different plant and animal species in an ecosystem, right down to the different genes in individual species. Biodiversity also describes the processes that support an ecosystem, like pollination and the way that nutrients move through the environment.

Biodiversity is important because it increases environmental health and resilience. Healthy biodiversity allows ecosystems to cope better with pressures like climate change and bushfires. The greater a species’ genetic diversity – how many different genes it has – the better the species can adapt to environmental change.

If species don’t have enough room to move, migrate and breed, then they can become inbred. Inbreeding causes a loss of diversity in a species’ genes. Inbred species don’t survive as well as genetically diverse species and will often die out. The loss or reduction of one species can then also affect others, which can cause entire ecosystems to collapse.

Threats to biodiversity come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from things like diseases and chemical sprays to large-scale land clearing for houses or farming (see Canberra’s growing urban area). Threats can be immediate, like a fire (see Bushfires in the ACT), or they can happen more slowly, like climate change (see Climate change).

When considering how to conserve biodiversity, it’s important that we don’t just look at the more immediate visible threats, but also those that are slowly affecting our environment.

Bettong. Source: Ryan Colley.

Did you know?

There are eight million known plant and animal species on Earth, including 5.5 million insect species. Up to a million of these species are threatened with extinction – and this could happen within the next 100 years. It’s critical that we take action to protect biodiversity around the globe.