World Changing Post #4

Biodiversity: How much is enough? Page 493

Rebecca Tulis

For my fourth article I chose to read Biodiversity: How much is enough? It talks about the importance of biodiversity and how the loss of certain species can be both detrimental to an ecosystem and our lives. More and more species are becoming extinct and it is very difficult to stop. When I was reading about this problem. I couldn’t help but think about the human species and how we compare. While others are trying to fight through extinction, our population is increasing. I find it interesting how some species need more of each other while others have to fight off overpopulation.

The article also refers to how we as humans have to intervene and save the most threatened habitats. What we do is document and preserve the DNA and use that to make clones. However, the clones don’t always turn out exactly like the original. For instance, the article talked about what would happen if we cloned a songbird and it didn’t have the voice of the typical songbird. Preserving diversity is both beneficial and significant to us because the more diversity, the more we can learn about our environment. Also, if biodiversity were to decrease, our environment may change for the worse affecting the way we live our lives.

After reading this, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not our intervening and trying to help preserve biodiversity is actually hurting the environment. What were to happen if we were to not interfere and let nature take its course? Would that hurt an ecosystem or only make it stronger in a sense that it has to deal with the extinction and learn to adapt to it? Whether it is good or bad, biodiversity is still extremely important to our planet because extinction is one of the biggest problems we are facing today.

Steffen, Alex. World Changing: A User's Guider for the 21st Century. New York: Abrams, 2008