How can we help to sustain Terrestrial Biodiversity?

• We can help to sustain terrestrial biodiversity by identifying and protecting severely threatened areas.

Three Principles to Protect Ecosystem:

• Map the world’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and create an inventory of the species contained in each of them and the ecosystem services they provide.

• Locate and protect the most endangered ecosystem and species, with emphasis on protecting plant biodiversity and ecosystem services,

• Seek to restore as many degraded ecosystems as possible.

Protecting Global Biodiversity Hotspots Is an Urgent Priority:

To Protect as much of the earth’s remaining biodiversity as possible, some biodiversity scientists urge adoption of an emergency action strategy to identify and quickly protect biodiversity hotspots.

These Ecological arks are areas especially rich plant species that are found nowhere else and are great danger of extinction.

We can Rehabilitate and Restore Ecosystem That We Have Damaged:

Almost every natural place on the earth has been affected or degraded to some degree by human activities.

By studying how natural ecosystems recover, scientists are learning how to speed up repair operations using a variety of approaches, including the following four:

• Restoration: Returning a particular degraded habitat or ecosystem to a condition as similar as possible to it’s natural state.

• Replacement: Replacing a degraded ecosystem with another type of ecosystem.

• Creating Artificial ecosystems: For example, creating artificial wetlands to help reduce flooding or treat sewage.

Science Focus

Ecological Restoration of a tropical dry forest in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica is the site of one of the world’s largest ecological restoration projects.

Daniel Jansen professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania and a leader in the field of restoration ecology.

Jansen recognizes that ecological restoration and protection of the park will fail unless the people in the surrounding area believe they will benefit from such efforts.

How can we Help to Sustain Aquatic Biodiversity?

We can help to sustain aquatic biodiversity by establishing protected sanctuaries, managing coastal development, reducing water pollution, and preventing overfishing.

Overfishing: Gone Fishing; Fish Gone

A Fishery is a concentration of a particular aquatic species (usually Fish or Shellfish).

The Fishprint is defined as the area of ocean needed to sustain the consumption of an average of an person, a nation or the world.

We can Protect and Sustain Marine Biodiversity

Protecting marine biodiversity is difficult for several reasons:

First The human ecological footprint and fishprint are

expanding so rapidly into aquatic areas that it is difficult

to monitor the impacts. Second much to the damage to

the oceans and other bodies of water is not visible to

most people. Third many people incorrectly view the

seas as an inexhaustible resources that can be absorb an

almost infinite amount of waste and pollution and still

produce all the seafood we want.

And Fourth, most of the world’s ocean area lies outside the legal jurisdiction of any country.