So how is this different than an ecosystem? Biodiversity isn't a thing: it's a property or characteristic, one that can be measured. Perhaps a good analogy is the concept of health. Health consists of many components, like good teeth and a sound heart, but also healthy body processes like good circulation and regeneration of cells. All these components and processes are interrelated. Likewise, biodiversity encompasses all life forms, like fungi, ferns, and frogs, as well as processes like photosynthesis and fire that tie them together.

Just as we can think of health at many levels-healthy organs, healthy body, healthy community- biodiversity exists at many levels. Two black bears differ from each other because of genetic diversity. So do two different from those in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. That's why biologist are concerned with preserving subspecies. Having evolved in the river systems of Colorado's eastern slope, the greenback cutthroat trout has unique characteristics not found in other subspecies of cutthroat living in different areas of the West.

Species diversity is the biodiversity level we're most familiar with, From lichens to limber pines to lark buntings, we know the world is filled with a variety of species. But plants and animals don't exist in a vacuum. Whether they live in the Rockies or the Smokies, those black bears are interdependent parts of a community of other organisms and processes. Ecosystem diversity describes those many communities, like forest, wetlands, and prairies, which make up the natural world.

Finally, biodiversity operates in the way these communities are distributed across a landscape. each site may have something unique about it that allows certain species to live and interact there. A low-lying spot the dry prairie collects water. Cattails spring up and red-winged blackbirds stake out a territory among them, a tiny marsh amidst the buffalo grass.
 
Now that we've got an idea of what this mysterious biodiversity is, why do we care about it? Like health, biodiversity is a property we want to conserve. At each of it's levels - genetics, species, community/ecosystem. landscape - biodiversity contributes to a healthy, diverse world. Businesses diversity to lessen the impact changes and losses. In turn, the greater the diversity of plant and animal species and communities in an ecosystem, the greater the system's stability.

The reasons for preserving biodiversity include values that go beyond human needs. Ecologically, even species and processes that appear worthless or detrimental to humans have a role in nature. Beavers gnaw down valuable trees, but in doing so have an important role in creating wetlands and meadows. Though we may fear fire and seek to control it, fire is essential to the life cycle of many communities, such as a prairie. Fire clears out vegetation, returns nutrients to the soil in the form of ash and charcoal and creates a rich bed for new plant growth.

Aesthetically, people derive pleasure from nature A diversity of plants, animals, and communities adds to the texture of life. How dull the world would be if it were all manicured bluegrass parks with rows of evenly spaced trees and water running through in concrete channels. What if the only wildlife left was starlings, pigeons, fox squirrels and white-tailed deer?

Practically, humans derive great agricultural, medical and scientific benefits from nature. By allowing some species to disappear, we may lose important resources we don't even know about. The Pacific yew, destroyed for years as a "trash" tree, has recently been found to be effective in the treatment of breast cancer,

Just as poor health results from certain influences, biodiversity can be lost or degraded. Physical changes to the land can impact biodiversity. Pollution may directly poison wildlife and vegetation or degrade the habitat until it can't support life. Introduction of non-native plants and animals often harms or eliminates native species by out competing them for resources, bring in disease, interbreeding, or predation.

Caution: Physical changes sometimes seem to increase biodiversity. Clearcutting old-growth forest, for example, creates edge habitat favorable to numerous species. Many edge species will expand into the area, but those dependent on dense old-growth forest are lost.

As our understanding of biodiversity grows, wildlife management is changing. Initially we took a species-by-species approach, rushing to save a species only after its numbers had dropped perilously low. The problem is this crisis-by-crisis approach is prohibitively expensive, inefficient and ineffective. Over 15 years, Colorado alone has spent about $100,000 annually on peregrine falcon recovery. That doesn't include the money spent by federal government and many other states.

Even if a species is rescued from extinction, it can't survive if the community on which it depends is degraded or destroyed. So we've come to the realization we must broaden our management to include ecosystems. By protecting community types - marshlands, deciduous forest, tallgrass prairie, prairie potholes - we protect most plant and animal species, including low profile species of insects, algae, and amphibians which may ve "invisible" to us but are crucial to the system. Basically, by keeping the house, grounds and resources healthy and diverse, we keep the residents healthy. (Though we move toward ecosystem management, we will continue to manage some individual species where it is appropriate, such as with threatened and endangered wildlife. Wildlife management of the future will be a combination of both ecosystem and species management.)

Approaches to ecosystem management vary widely. Some say humans are a part of the ecosystem so their actions and impacts are natural and should proceed unchecked. This approach sees no difference between the effects of a nuclear war and the extinction of the dinosaurs. It ignores the fact that humans impacts occur in the time frame of a decade or century, not the millennia of evolutionary and geologic processes. Others see humans as totally unnatural and advocate no human uses or impacts on resources or the environment whatsoever.

Both these approaches are unrealistic. Humans are going to use the earth's resources and in so doing have a significant effect on the ecosystem. But that effect needs to be moderated so it is not devastating. We need lumber, fossil fuels, and agricultural land, so we must find a way to preserve biodiversity while making wise use of the earth's resources. And, finally. we need to preserve those other "varieties of life and their processes" because we depend on them too.

Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.       —Chief Seattle

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