Biodiversity

What’s the value of biodiversity? Does it really mean that much? So what if rainforests and coral reefs, the two most biodiverse habitats known, are being destroyed at record rates?

Richard Leakey has called the current wave of biodiversity reduction the “Sixth Extinction,” referring to the five other great extinction events known to have occurred in the past. However, this is the first one known to have been caused by humans, and not external events.

For example, many scientists are convinced that 65 million years ago, a huge meteorite struck the earth, causing the extinction of perhaps 50% of life on the planet. But fossil records seem to indicate that about 250 million years ago, over 90% of all life on Earth was destroyed in the Permian-Triassic extinction (perhaps due to an asteroid or comet impact), an event of which far fewer people have ever heard.

The implications of this are obvious – can life survive regardless of what’s thrown at it? Or is the ongoing sixth extinction a harbinger of our own demise?

Also, ethically speaking, do we have the right to decimate or wipe out other life forms? Again, the biblical directive to subdue nature no longer seems applicable. And what of life forms not yet even recognized by science? How can we know what we’re destroying if we aren’t even aware of its presence?

The field of what can be called “cryptobiology,” the search for still-undiscovered life forms, is sometimes ridiculed when people think about the so-called “Loch Ness Monster” or “Bigfoot.” But while the majority of large animals and plants have already been described by science, who knows what still awaits discovery? And who are we to dismiss the “value” of such life forms, especially before scientists have even examined and studied them?

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