Conserving Biodiversity

Points covered:

• What did conservation efforts focus on in the past?
• Why is saving a species not sufficient for conserving biodiversity?

Words to know:

• ENDANGERED SPECIES - species that are threatened with extinction.
• VERTEBRATES - animals with a backbone.
• FUNGI - decomposer organisms, such as mushrooms and mildew.

Conserving biodiversity has not always been high on the conservation agenda. In the past, most conservation efforts were focussed on saving a particular species from decline or extinction. Many conservationists argued that this was an effective way to not only protect endangered species, but to conserve biodiversity as well. This was because protecting an endangered species usually involved protecting that species' habitat and therefore all the other plants and animals in that habitat gained protection as well. This argument has some merit, because it is usually easier to gain support for the protection of one particular species than it is to convince people to support the conservation of biodiversity as a whole.

However, we now know that this approach is not the best way to conserve biodiversity. Areas we protect for a single species are not necessarily the areas we would protect if we were primarily interested in conserving biodiversity. There are a several reasons for this:

• If we only conserve areas because they are home to an endangered species, we may neglect some of the most important areas for biodiversity conservation.
• One of the three levels of biodiversity is ecosystem diversity, which is unlikely to be preserved if we only assess areas for preservation based on a single species.
• If we wait until a species is recognised as endangered before we preserve an ecosystem, the ecosystem may be so degraded that not only is the target species doomed but so are all the other unknown species that also inhabit that environment.
• Most conservation of a single species focuses on vertebrates or flowering plants whereas invertebrates, non-flowering plants, fungi and micro-organisms, which make up the bulk of species diversity in any ecosystem, tend to be ignored.

If we are genuine in our desire to conserve biodiversity, it is far more efficient to conserve whole ecosystems which encompass biodiversity at all levels, rather than focus on a few highly visible and popular species in isolation.

Greg Gowing
Terrestrial Ecology
Australian Museum