"You are an integral part of nature; your fate is tightly linked with biodiversity, the huge variety of other animals and plants, the places they live and their surrounding environments, all over the world.
You rely on this diversity of life to provide you with the food, fuel, medicine and other essentials you simply cannot live without. Yet this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated rate because of human activities. This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on which we depend, to resist growing threats
such as climate change."
-from the International Year of Biodiversity website
You rely on this diversity of life to provide you with the food, fuel, medicine and other essentials you simply cannot live without. Yet this rich diversity is being lost at a greatly accelerated rate because of human activities. This impoverishes us all and weakens the ability of the living systems, on which we depend, to resist growing threats
such as climate change."
-from the International Year of Biodiversity website
2010 is synonymous with: the International Year of Biodiversity! But what is Biodiversity and why are we celebrating it this year?
Biodiversity is...
Everything in nature, all the different species of animals and plants living on this earth. Throughout the year, I will be promoting and celebrating biodiversity with you.
Why are celebrating it this year?
Why? Because there is no better time to bring awareness to this seemingly hidden but strangely obvious topic. Biodiversity, or the diversity of biology, is decreasing every minute, and every hour of every day. Did you know that ONE species goes EXTINCT every 10 MINUTES? After reading that last sentence, your lack of urgency and lack of empowerment probably kicked in. Do you realize that everything you do has an influence on the survival or extinction of all life in nature?
That plastic bottle cap that you properly recycled may have made it to the recycling station...or it may not have. It may have found its way out of the recycling bin and was washed into the sewage, where it then made its way to the nearby lake and out to sea. Who knows, a few years from now, that same plastic bottle cap may be one of billions of other plastic bottle caps floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, choking the aquatic environment out of a school of endangered fish species. If you want to prevent this from happening, just STOP USING PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES. Use a reusable aluminum/plastic canteen!
What I just described in the paragraph above is not some make-belief story. It happens every day. The Pacific Ocean really is becoming a Plastific Ocean (I just made that up), or better known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Watch this amazing video about Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation who first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch— an endless floating waste of plastic trash. In this video, he draws our attention to the growing problem of plastic debris in our world seas.
Visit the website of the International Year of Biodiversity: http://www.cbd.int/2010/welcome/
