Main content
High school biology - NGSS
Course: High school biology - NGSS > Unit 9
Lesson 3: Sustainability and natural resource managementConservation and the race to save biodiversity
Different approaches to conservation and how they can protect species and habitats. Video by California Academy of Sciences. Created by California Academy of Sciences.
Want to join the conversation?
- This was buried in one of the selected references and I think it is important to take a closer look at the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (signed by President Nixon over 40 years ago) - there is a video and a lot of special links - http://www.fws.gov/endangered/laws-policies/ - this section on biodiversity seems to be still under development.
Does anybody know if there have been any updates or additions to this act or have there been any other important environmental acts or legislation since then that have been signed into law?(11 votes) - Can we reverse our ecological impact? For instance, could we reverse global warming and fix the Arctic?(8 votes)
- Hi NerdLorrd28. Time travel is probably the only way to actually fix this problem. Right now, all we can do is prevent our ecological impact on the Eartth.(2 votes)
- why are certain speices so badly protected if scientist can bring them back like the wolly mamonth?(1 vote)
- When did we bring back woolly-mammoths? Sure there is the beginnings of technology and processes that could be used to bring them back but so far all we get is a mammoth meatball.
We protect endangered species to save us work in the future, we don't know enough about them to confidently say we can bring them back. Also just having biodiversity is nice in itself :)(2 votes)
- anybody here from summit?(0 votes)
Video transcript
(gentle instrumental music) - [Narrator] I often find
it helpful to look at a formal definition of a term in order to jumpstart some ideas about
an interesting topic. And for this video, the term I want to look at is conservation. It's been defined as,
the study of the loss of Earth's biological diversity, and the ways this loss can be prevented. So right there up front,
biodiversity is a fundamental part of the very definition of conservation. Conservation or protection of biodiversity can be accomplished in many, many ways, and from my point of view,
these can be classified into two basic approaches. One is protecting species, and the other is protecting places in which those species live. Different kinds of conservation techniques can be applied to these
two different approaches, but in a lot of cases,
very similar methods can also accomplish the goals. The concepts of savings
species and saving places weave together just as much as they can be treated separately. Let's start with techniques
that can protect species. Species protection is valuable
because it can be used to prioritize which
species are most in need of being saved before they face the biggest deadline of all, extinction. Species protection can include legislation at national or local levels to protect organisms that most need protection through things like the
Endangered Species Act. Other types of statutory
protection of species can be developed through
international treaties such as the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. This treaty controls or regulates international markets for
wild animals and plants, or their parts, so that they're
not driven to extinction or over exploited in ways that are harmful not only to the organisms and biodiversity but to the markets themselves. An example of how economic interest can and should dovetail with
protection of the environment. In some cases, a species is so threatened that a complete ban on
its trade is required. International wildlife trade is estimated to involve hundreds of
millions of individual plants and animals,
resulting in a market worth billions of dollars a year. So it's not a small problem, and it ranges from live
animals and plants, to products that are
derived from organisms, such as food, leather goods, timber, curios, medicines, and even things like wooden musical instruments. Another really useful
conservation tool is the red list of the International Union
for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, which provides
very useful guidelines highlighting the types of biodiversity or the species themselves that need to be protected the most. All species are placed in
one of seven IUCN categories, ranging from extinct to least concern. Placing species into these categories requires adequate data, which underscores the importance of biodiversity research and the dissemination of the findings. And that's what I always mean
about biodiversity research and its symbiotic partner, education. Good data equal better decisions. The IUCN highlights the
crucial nature of research. If you have the right data,
you can place known species into one of the seven
different categories. Categories that are really,
really helpful for education as well as for making
good protection policies, and even for helping
fundraise for more research, more education, and conservation. Another species protection
technique involves the establishment of species
survival plans, or SSPs. When scientists believe that
captive breeding programs can help prevent extinction,
SSPs can be developed for species that are in danger
of extinction in the wild. SSPs help to maintain
in captivity a reservoir of healthy populations of
endangered animal species. Populations that maintain
genetic diversity through careful breeding programs within the accredited community of zoos and aquaria that are
approved for maintaining these breeding programs. In North America alone,
there are over 170 species covered by more than 100
formal species survival plans that are specifically
aimed at trying to maintain populations of species that may or may not still exist in the wild. Some SSPs are specifically aimed at reintroducing these
species back to the wild. I should say a few brief words on the concept of reintroduction. It's a bit like any high risk surgery. A complex ecosystem can be
compared to your own body. With surgery, it's hard to know if it's going to be successful or maybe introduce more problems down the road, and it's always bloody expensive. Same with programs that
reintroduce species to wild ecosystems. They can be risky and expensive too, but also like surgery in some cases reintroduction can be really effective as a last resort to save lives. It's slowly working for things like some species of rare plants,
the Oryx, and whooping cranes. There are guiding principles
for reintroductions. There has to be adequate, appropriate, intact habitat in which to actually reintroduce the species. So here we get this overlapping effort not just to save an individual species, but to start talking about habitat preservation and restoration. It's not much good to
set your hooping cranes free in the wild if
there's not enough wetland for them to dance around in, to mate, breed, and get food for their young, to let them do their thing. I would insist that
the expense that we put into these efforts are worthwhile at every step of the way,
because of so much more than just counting up the
individuals that you can save. The whooping crane is
a magnificent animal. It symbolizes something special about unique environments in wild places that in general, people
really want to hold onto. People like magnificent animals. These cranes focus attention on organisms that symbolize the
importance of trying to save not just individuals of certain species, but entire places where these species can continue to exist. And the side benefits of
this kind of conservation, this technique of reintroduction, includes public awareness. A teaching opportunity that focuses even more awareness on
the overall problems of biodiversity loss. Let's explore more about what it means to conserve places in nature. Arguably, this is the most powerful way to protect biodiversity,
because by saving a place, you will likely be
saving entire ecosystems. You're certainly saving habitats, and this approach presents an opportunity to protect the most highly biodiverse or unique places on Earth
through the enactment of public policy. Places like biodiversity hotpots. Again, this brings research
and education together to help promote and expand the idea of saving an entire place. Now some places have been protected simply by their remoteness. Think of Antarctica for example. In spite of seeming to
be harsh and lifeless, it's a fragile place full of life, and it's constantly under pressure from some kind of resource
extraction, like fishing. Luckily, so far Antarctic biodiversity has been able to avoid most of the damage caused by human activity,
but really only because of its distance from
most human activities. It's a more difficult place to get to and to make money in, but that will change as technology improves so
that the passive protection of remoteness will likely soon go away. Of course, other places
that are more threatened by human encroachment
have been singled out for special status as protected parks. I remember in my youth, we even had places called conservation
areas in Southern Ontario where I grew up. Certainly as a kid I loved being able to walk through these conservation areas, and seeing things that I wasn't gonna see in any urban environment
that surrounded them. They had a big influence on my early ideas and hopes to study and
protect these special places. Everybody knows about the United States national park system,
which has been called America's best idea. It could be argued that
without the protected parks and regions that have been established around the world,
biodiversity would have taken an even bigger hit than it has so far. In the sea, marine protected areas are underwater conservation parks. These places are havens
for organisms like fish that would otherwise be
subjected to over-harvesting that would reduce diversity,
and cause negative changes in their ecosystems. Marine protected areas can
allow populations to recover, serving as reservoirs to
repopulate surrounding areas. A good example of this
is in the Philippines, where a body of water called
the Verde Island Passage already has patches of
coral reef ecosystems that are marine protected areas. But imagine if the entire passage could become a gigantic
area where the recovery and reservoir functions can happen. With regulation, total
exploitation of this special part of the coral triangle could be prevented, allowing the passage to
act as a kind of pump for corals and other reef species, distributing them out
to more impacted areas in surrounding waters. The Verde Island Passage
has shown resilience to coral diseases and bleaching, and surrounding areas suffering from environmental degradation
would recover more quickly because you've got this unsurpassed biodiversity reservoir in
the Verde Island Passage as a neighbor, a neighbor
with that all important healthy ecosystem function that makes for strong ecosystem services. Lastly, I want to
mention an emerging field called conservation genetics, that ties into protection
not just of species, but of several different
levels of biodiversity from the genetic traits that vary among individual members of populations, all the way to the various populations that make up a species. And of course, this includes
the genetic diversity held within entire ecosystems. So conservation genetics is a different potentially powerful way of looking at conservation techniques and a new way of assessing the value of protecting and conserving different ecosystems. Essentially another tool in
the conservation tool belt. Any big picture inclusive
conservation approach such as this requires rigorous, diverse data that rely on the science of evolutionary lineages. The stuff of how biodiversity
is actually generated over time and space. All this science helps
us better understand what types of organisms are most crucial to a given area, or to a given lineage, and how biodiversity protection can most effectively be served by the right conservation techniques. Techniques that we need
now more than ever.