Hi.

Hi my name is Dorothy Aceves but everyone calls me Dory. I am a graphic design major here at Lehigh University but I have always been interested in matters of the environment which is why I am looking into a minor in environmental studies. I don’t believe I actually need this class for the minor requirement but it looked highly interesting and I decided to have a go at it. In my personal opinion the two matters of conservation and biodiversity are two of the most interesting as well as important issues in environmental issues today.

There is an obvious problem occurring in the world today that has escaped our narrow point of view here in the United States. There is a constant loss of biodiversity occurring in ecosystems throughout the world. When we were little we used to learn about the endangered species around the world and the importance of saving them. There are commercials to save the pandas and the polar bears but there are thousands of other species that are in danger as well. The reason that we see these large animals as the poster children for loss of biodiversity is because they are familiar to us. When we see a video of a polar bear cub alone of an ice drift it resonates with us and we feel compassion towards it. If there were ads for a rare South American beetle that is in danger of dying out we wouldn’t be too concerned. As far as matters of biodiversity goes for the most part we only care when we are personally invested in it whether it be physically or emotionally.

The problem with this is that when biodiversity is lost so is resistance to various other factors. Biodiversity provides a defense against many mass extinction scenarios such as disease, predators, and habitat loss. This is because with a diverse population of various species is it more likely that one thing could not wipe out every species. This provides more security for a particular ecosystem.

Another problem that we as humans face when trying to deal with biodiversity is that we are not sure how diverse our planet actually is. There are innumerable species that we could not have come in contact with yet. Therefore when dealing with an ecosystem whether it be trying to develop the land or harvest the plants for food and medicine we could be destroying the habitat of an organism that we do not even know exists! In our society today we are so sure of ourselves, so sure of the decisions we make and the actions we take that we do not stop to think that there may be other organisms out there that we know nothing about that we could be effecting at this very moment.