Chapter 9. Chapter 9: Biodiversity

Interactive Study Guide

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Guiding Question 9.5

What can be done to protect biodiversity?

Why You Should Care

By now, you have learned several reasons that biodiversity is important to our lives and the biosphere as a whole. There are many ways that you yourself can protect biodiversity. Simply living as "green" as possible protects natural resources and decreases the pressure put on natural areas. Supporting smart urban planning is another way to protect biodiversity: Re-developing land that has already been in human use and strategically locating new development both serve to protect natural areas. There are many non-governmental agencies that also work to either preserve natural areas or endangered species. "Charismatic" species like tigers and pandas are often the focus of conservation efforts, but protecting them also means protecting entire ecosystems.

Test Your Vocabulary

Fill in the blanks with the correct term for each of the following definitions:

When a wealthy nation forgives the debt of a developing nation in return for a pledge to protect natural areas in that developing nation, this is known as .

The primary law under which biodiversity is protected in the United States is the .

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Match the conservation practice to its description:

Term	Definition
	A process that allows us to see which species are present and how robust their populations are; also helps identify specific threats to populations’ well-being.
	A program developed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) that includes captive breeding plans to selectively breed individuals and maximize genetic diversity. The ultimate goal is to release individuals back into the wild to build up wild populations.
	The repair of natural habitats back to (or close to) their original state. This may include the reintroduction of native species in an attempt to reestablish community connections. The restoration not only improves ecological diversity, it also increases or helps maintain species diversity.
	The clean-up of pollution that is often a part of ecosystem restoration. Physical, chemical, or biological methods might be employed to remove or decontaminate an area and make it suitable for wildlife.
	Protected areas that have been set aside and that limit human impact and provide sanctuaries for wildlife. These may be public areas (such as national parks, forests, or marine protected areas) and may be funded by ecotourism or debt-for-nature swaps.
	Measures that protect endangered species, such as the U.S. Endangered Species Act, Canada’s Species at Risk Act, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which forbids trade of any endangered species or any product made from one, and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which promotes sustainable use of ecosystems and biodiversity.

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Short-Answer Questions

Suppose that, in the course of surveying streams that would feed into a hydroelectric dam that is already in the process of being built, researchers find a small species of minnow that has not previously been described to science. It apparently only lives in a few streams and needs small, shallow, fast-moving water to survive, so when the river backs up, covering the streams after the dam is closed, the minnow would most likely be extirpated and possibly become extinct. According to the U.S. Endangered Species Act, this minnow should be protected, which would mean stopping construction of the dam that has already cost millions of dollars in taxpayer funds and that would provide much-needed cheap electricity and flood control to an impoverished area.

1) Are the intrinsic and instrumental values of the minnow clear from this passage?

2) Do you think the minnow should be protected? How would your answer change if you were:
a. A politician
b. A construction company owner
c. A citizen who would benefit from the electricity
d. A scientist
e. An extreme sports/outdoors enthusiast

To read about the inspiration for this question, check out this article.

1) The intrinsic value is somewhat easier to infer since we know that all species contribute to the proper functioning of an ecosystem, and it’s unclear what the impact of allowing this minnow to go extinct would be.

Any direct human value of the minnow (instrumental value) is harder to infer. You could hypothesize that the minnow might be important food for sport fish, but that’s really a guess.

2) It’s difficult to decide whether or not a species should be protected from extinction when allowing its extinction would provide many benefits to people. Obviously, many people would have many different stakes in this decision, so you could predict, say, that the politician would support his constituents’ needs, his constituents would probably want the electricity, the scientist would support the minnow’s intrinsic right to exist, etc.

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Chapter 9. Chapter 9: Biodiversity

What can be done to protect biodiversity?

Guiding Question 9.5

Test Your Vocabulary

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