Why is biodiversity important?

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Genuine question. I was talking to someone recently and they asked me this and while I had some answers (mentioned below), I didn’t have confidence in my answers.

I know climate change is a threat to biodiversity and that it’s important to preserve it but I was never told why biodiversity is important. Is it to keep ecosystems in check (I feel like this is probably one of the most important reasons)? Is it to just give humans a bunch of species to look at and appreciate? Is it to ensure that if the human population died, some forms of life would remain that would be fit for whatever catastrophe affected human populations and keep life going?

Is it all of these things? Any other reasons?

Thank you!

In: Biology

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

My answer for five year olds: every lifeform is like a thread in a fabric, the fabric being a forest, lake, meadow or the like. With species drastically declining in numbers or disappearing altogether, the fabric thins out and even gets wholes. At some point it can no longer function and falls apart completely.

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