What is this thing called Biodiversity?

Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is how scientists describe what the rest of us understand to be ‘nature’. Plants, flowers, trees, insects, birds, mammals, fish and all the other species that we can and can’t see that make up the living natural world.

‘Biodiversity value’ relates to the amount and abundance of different species. An area with high biodiversity (ie different types of species in healthy numbers) is indicative of the health of the environment in general.

Biodiversity Loss

The natural world is suffering, primarily because of the actions of humans. We have dug up, built over, knocked down, polluted and hunted and it is acknowledged globally that the loss of birds, butterflies, wildflowers, trees and others from our environment is at crisis point.

In 2011 the UK government published its Natural Envrionment White Paper, a 50 year vision for the environment and ultimately stated a goal to halt biodiversity loss by 2020. 

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson, has stated several times that economic growth should not be at the expense of the natural environment. Alas, he hasn't done much to ensure that this actually happens.

In the past nature conservation has focused on creating nature reserves but now the challenge is: ‘landscape scale conservation’, which really means that we need to make space for nature in every corner of a cities, towns and villages, not just in fenced nature reserves.

This means that landowners from house builders, to retailers, to local authorities, to farmers and everyone in between has a responsibility to be much more considerate of their impact on the environment.

So what if we lose a few butterfiles and flowers?

Everything in the natural world is connected and can be said to have a purpose. If you think about it nothing goes to waste in nature, everything is used and has a use. It’s a complete system and we break it at our peril.

We are breaking it and we are starting to see the consequences.

Soil erosion that isn't preventing rain water from flooding our streets, lack of green spaces that have contributed to physical inactivity and mental health problems, decline of insects that threaten crop pollination, these are all warning signs telling us to change our ways.

Biodiversity isn't a particularly user-friendly word so let me put it like this: We are destroying nature and in doing so we are making ourselves ill. It's like slowly being poisoned, you don't notice at the start but as the cumulative effect takes hold the signs emerge and then it's too late.