Q.Explain as to how protection of biodiversity hot spots alone can reduce up to 30% of the current rate of species extinction.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Biodiversity hotspots concentrate an extremely high share of the world's species (with high endemism) into less than 2% of Earth's land area; because they are also the regions with the fastest habitat loss, giving them strict, prioritised protection can prevent close to 30% of the extinctions now underway — a large conservation payoff for a small geographic commitment.
Why 'hotspot' protection exists as a strategy:
Conservationists face a resource problem — the number of species and habitats needing protection far exceeds what any nation can realistically fund. To use limited conservation resources most efficiently, eminent conservationists identified certain 'biodiversity hotspots' for maximum protection: regions marked by very high species richness AND a high degree of endemism, i.e., species confined to that region and found nowhere else on Earth. Initially 25 such hotspots were recognised; nine more have since been added, bringing the global total to 34. Three of them — the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka, Indo-Burma, and the Himalaya — cover India's own exceptionally biodiverse regions.
Hotspots are not just species-rich; they are also regions of accelerated habitat loss. This combination — enormous concentrated biodiversity sitting inside rapidly vanishing habitat — is exactly what makes them so urgent to protect and so efficient to target with limited resources.
How this yields a reduction of almost 30%: …
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