Human populations are increasing by leaps and bounds. This has put such great pressure on the land that the future of the world’s animals and plants hangs by a frayed thread.

The natural resource conservation is all about trying to protect the world’s ecology, organic habitats and the organisms that live within them. Unfortunately many organic habitats lie in the path of expanding towns and cities and are overrun. Others sit on valuable mineral deposits and are stripped away so the hidden bounty can be exploited. Much natural habitat is also torn down to cultivate the land for food. All this habitat destruction provides humans with short-term material gains. Trying to convince individuals that within the long run our future might lie hidden in some dank corner from the tropics and not in their plans for a new business complex and shopping mall is really a tricky task; Modern conservationists should try and discover a balance between human interests and also the protection of our globe’s biodiversity.

Species, genes and communities

Biodiversity is really a phrase frequently used in natural resource conservation biology and ecology – but what exactly does it mean? The term could be divided into three main sections. Species diversity refers towards the number of various species that exist. Protection of species diversity is greatly helped by protecting keystone species – organisms vital towards the continuation of numerous other species. These are crucial in maintaining the balance and smooth running of an ecosystem. For instance, it’s estimated that for every type of tropical plant that becomes extinct, a cascade of 10-30 invertebrate species follows, because they are all dependent on that specific plant.

Genetic diversity may be the amount of genetic variation discovered for each species, both within populations and between separate populations. The importance of genetic diversity is best seen when it’s lost, a typical problem among little, isolated populations. These tend to suffer from inbreeding (the mating of associated people). In a small population it might be impossible to avoid inbreeding, as almost everybody is related. There are complex genetic reasons why inbreeding causes problems, but the results are that the offspring tend to suffer from inbreeding depression, which means they have a far higher chance of inheriting particular diseases (known as congenital illnesses).

They’re also much more likely to be born with genetic imperfections, often resulting in sterility, and the likelihood from the offspring becoming aborted naturally (spontaneous abortion), or being born dead, are increased. Small populations also often lose genetic variety more than time by the process of genetic drift. This occurs when genes, particularly rare ones, carried by a person, are not inherited by any offspring and are lost when that individual dies. More than time the genetic variability – the process that enables species to adapt as local conditions change – of the population diminishes.

If all the members of the population are genetically very similar they are very vulnerable to being wiped out by a single disease to which none of them hold any resistance. Community-level diversity may be the collective reaction of the community to changing environmental conditions. The ecologies of entire communities have not been well studied as yet, as most research tends to concentrate on individual organisms and their interactions with other organisms and also the environment.