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What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity, or biological diversity, refers to the
variety of life at many different levels, from genes to
species, populations to ecosystems. The earth sustains
millions of different species, many of which have not
yet been discovered. According to the United Nations
Convention on Biodiversity, which was adopted at the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro as an important
component of sustainable development, it includes the
genetic differences within species, the variety between
populations of species, the variety of ecosystems, and
the goods and services that this diversity provides.
The ecosystems that support life on our planet provide us with a number of services, ranging
from food, shelter, and medicine to intrinsic benefits from the enjoyment of nature. Without a
diverse natural world that has the space and time to adapt to change, we will lose the ability of
the earth to provide the ecosystem services that we take for granted. Every organism in an
ecosystem plays a role in the ecosystem where it exists, and causing the extinction of an
organism often has unforeseen consequences. Ecosystems provide natural filtration for our water
and air, rejuvenate our soils through microbial fertilization, and sustain organisms that are
critical to our well-being and survival, such as bees, which pollinate the majority of our
agricultural products. According to a group of prominent ecological economists, the value of the
earth’s ecosystem services is $33 trillion annually, which we receive for free (Costanza,
1998). However, when ecosystem services are disrupted and can no longer function normally, we
begin to feel the economic as well as health effects.
New York State has numerous regions that are rich in biodiversity, or “significant natural
communities”. The state designates these communities by determining the rarity of a community
throughout its global range, as well as its
rarity in New York State. These ranks are
based on the range of the community, the
number of occurrences, the viability of the
occurrences, and the vulnerability of the
community around the globe or across the
state. The New York Natural Heritage
program monitors 174 natural community
types, 727 rare plant species, and 432 rare
animal species. The graph at left, provided by
the Heritage program, includes all 2,863
vascular plants, natural communities, and vertebrate animals native to New York, but does not
include invertebrates, for which there are insufficient data. The graph shows how all of the
species native to New York are doing, and while just over half are secure, about 37% are
threatened in some way: imperiled (known to exist at 6-20 locations in NY state), critically
imperiled (known to exist at 5 or fewer locations in the state), historical (no occurrences reported
within the last 15 years), or presumed extirpated (all known occurrences are gone and there is
little chance of finding new populations).
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment suggests that of the
approximately 2 million known species, more than 90% are
likely to be invertebrates. According to the IUCN Red List,
which categorizes all threatened and endangered species
worldwide, closer to 95% of the known species are
invertebrates, but less than 1% of these species have been
evaluated to determine if they’re threatened.