Zoology · Ch 12 — Biodiversity and its Conservation
Biodiversity
Biodiversity
The 1992 UN Earth Summit defined biodiversity as the variability among living organisms from every source — terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes they belong to — covering diversity within a species, between species, and among the ecosystems of a region. It captures both how many kinds of organisms exist and how common each kind is within an ecological system, making it the single most important functional component of a natural ecosystem. Biodiversity underpins soil formation, nutrient recycling, climate regulation, waste breakdown and disease control, and functions as a working index of an ecosystem's health, since human survival ultimately depends on the wellbeing of every plant, animal and micro-organism sharing the biosphere. The chapter's opening photograph of the endangered Nilgiri tahr, hunted and poached toward extinction despite being the Western Ghats' most recognisable montane mammal, makes the case immediately: even …
What this figure shows. The chapter-opening photograph shows the Nilgiri tahr (Nilgiritragus hylocrius), a wild goat-antelope species endemic to the Western Ghats' higher elevations and the state animal of Tamil Nadu, depicted in its natural rocky montane grassland habitat. The caption identifies it as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, its population reduced chiefly by hunting and poaching. The image sets up the chapter's opening theme — that India's remarkable biodiversity, of which the tahr is one visible example, faces serious ongoing human-driven t …