The biodiversity balancing act: “Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”

Britain’s 30 million hedgehogs have been reduced to 1.3 million in the last 50 years. Three quarters of butterfly species are in decline. Britain has lost three of its 24 species of bumblebee in last 70 years. Moths numbers have dropped by a third since 1968. In the last 100 years, around 60 species of moth have become extinct. There are those who say all this angst about biodiversity is nonsense. But such free-marketers are wrong. Scottish Natural Heritage’s list of over 1,000 threatened species is not dominated by nice furry mammals or dramatic birds of prey, but by obscure lichens, algae, fungi, flowering plants, beetles, and more than 300 other insects on which the chaps at the top of the Mikado’s list depend, including us. “Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Sources:
Caledonian Mercury, 3 October 2011
http://caledonianmercury.com/2011/10/03/opinion-beavers-bumblebees-and-…
Porthmouth New, 3 October 2011
http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/lifestyle/tn2-saturday/a-weekend-with/why_w…