Biodiversity has great value to human society

The escalating loss of Earth’s biodiversity is of great concern for many reasons:

Recognizing the importance of biodiversity propels us to develop strategies for protecting and managing it and has spawned the development of conservation biology—an integrative scientific discipline that relies on principles of ecology, economics, social science, and policy to protect and manage Earth’s biodiversity. As you will see, we will refer to many ecological concepts from other chapters to establish, first, how and why biodiversity is being lost and, second, the role of conservation biology in protecting against and managing its further loss.