Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: Time Magazine reminds us that biological diversity conservation helps provide valuable ecosystem services for humans, such as food and climate security
February 22, 2017
As attacks on the federal Endangered Species Act (FESA) intensify in the new Congress, a new Time Magazine article highlights the enormous economic and social value of biological diversity conservation under that law. These benefits are often ignored by opponents of the FESA.
The primary purpose of the FESA is to protect individual imperiled species. However, species protection requires conservation and restoration of the ecosystems that species depend upon. Healthy native plant communities and ecosystems provide invaluable ecosystem services. Among many other benefits, native plant communities stabilize and protect our:
- food supplies by acting as reservoirs of genetic diversity to maintain food crops through climate change and pest and disease infestations, and by providing habitat for native pollinators
- water supplies by purifying and storing water
- communities by stabilizing soil, preventing landslides, and protecting streambanks and shorelines from erosion
- climate by buffering extreme weather and absorbing carbon dioxide
The annual global monetary value of ecosystem services has recently been estimated at up to $145 trillion.
What is also often overlooked is that conservation and restoration of native plant communities, such as Important Plant Areas, are also essential to emergency preparedness, particularly as climate change accelerates. Native plant communities protect humans during disasters by absorbing flood waters and stabilizing hillsides during severe storms or following fires.
For more on the fight over the federal Endangered Species Act, see a February 18, 2017 National Geographic article
For more on Ecosystem Services, see the Ecosystem Services Pages on the NPCC website
Also from Time Magazine: Why Restoring Nature Could Be the Key to Fighting Climate Change
