by Megan C Mitchell – 

Conservation appears in many forms and happens in a range of places. When people think of conservation, they think about it in terms of saving the rainforest, protecting the elephants or panda breeding programs but it does not have to be that it can be on a much smaller scale. Conservation refers to the “protection of Earth’s natural resources for current and future generations.” [1]. The biodiversity of an ecosystem needs to be conserved as a high biodiversity is important for life to sustain itself. However, urban areas have begun to encroach on natural ecosystems, meaning that urban planners now need to incorporate the conservation of these areas into the management for the town.

Figure 1. Tree lined road through fields in Australia. Image: Fctdolas, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

A piece of research focused on the importance of different variables for terrestrial reptiles and small mammals in fragmented urban areas, at both a local scale and a patch scale, found that urban planners need to consider many different variables at a multi-scale when considering how to properly conserve the local biodiversity. The researchers found that reptile numbers were positively impacted by different variables to the mammals, this difference in variables means that urban planners need to look at biodiversity conservation with an open view, considering even the smallest of variables. One specific area the researchers looked at was the impact of roads on the wildlife, the laying of roads is a form of urban development and would require natural habitats like forests to be cleared. They concluded that certain measures needed to be put in place for the wildlife to be conserved, as their research found that roads negatively impacted the wildlife. For new roads, designated crossing places for animals, and fencing around the road should be made standard procedure, for existing roads they should be updated with these procedures. If urban planners started to look at conservation at a multi-scale rather than a singular scale, then urban landscapes would not affect the biodiversity of surrounding areas as much due to the reduction of human interference [2].

The above research is focused on Brisbane, Australia, and the affect of urban development on its landscapes, but this issue occurs globally. Forests provide many important natural habitats for the world’s animals; the destruction of forests explains the loss of biodiversity and as the population increases so will this loss of life [3]. Forests are cleared for many reasons; the main reasons are for urban development (roads and buildings) and for agriculture, and we have cleared half of the world’s forests in a century [5]. Urban planners need to start being more considerate for biodiversity and put conservation efforts into place.

In conclusion, conserving biodiversity is key to life on earth, without biodiversity life would be significantly different. The population relies on biodiversity for raw materials; life, provided by trees as they produce oxygen; and science, as biodiversity helps us understand the workings of the planet [4]. Without biodiversity the world as we know it would not exist.

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Reference List

[1] National Geographic Society (2019) Conservation. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/conservation/[25/11/20]

[2] Garden, J.G., McAlpine, C.A. and Possingham, H.P. (2010) Multi-scaled habitat considerations for conserving urban biodiversity: native reptiles and small mammals in Brisbane, Australia. Landscape Ecology, 25, 1013-1028.

[3] The World Counts (2020) Rate of Deforestation. https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/planet-earth/forests-and-deserts/rate-of-deforestation/story [26/11/20]

[4] Australia State of the Environment (2016) Importance of Biodiversity. https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/biodiversity/topic/2016/importance-biodiversity [26/11/20]

[5] Hypotheses (2015) Biodiversity IV. https://globalherit.hypotheses.org/2790 [26/