Maintaining Biodiversity (AQA GCSE Biology)

Positive & Negative Human Impact

• The increasing human population and the activities of humans (including waste production, peat bog destruction, deforestation and our contributions to global warming) are causing a reduction in global and ecosystem-level biodiversity

• These activities are considered as negative human interactions with ecosystems

• There are, however, ways in which humans can interact positively with ecosystems

Methods to reduce negative impact on ecosystems & protect biodiversity

There are many conflicting pressures on maintaining biodiversity. Some examples include:

• The cost of programmes:

  • Protecting biodiversity can be very expensive

  • Eg. the land used for field margins could be used by farmers to grow crops and sell them – governments sometimes pay farmers a subsidy to make up for the lost money

  • It costs money to check that programmes designed to maintain biodiversity are actually being followed

• Protecting food security:

  • Land that is protected to maintain biodiversity could instead be used for farming – this can cause conflict in areas where there are food shortages

  • Sometimes organisms seen as a threat by farmers (eg. locusts and wolves) are killed to protect crops and livestock – this can negatively affect food chains / biodiversity and can cause conflict when species that are already under threat due to hunting or habitat loss are involved (eg. lions in parts of Africa)

• The development of society:

  • Increasing amounts of land are required to sustain the increasing human population

  • Eg. land required for new housing developments or for new agricultural land in developing countries

  • This high demand means that land with undisturbed habitats and high biodiversity is increasingly being used for development