Stockbreeding and Biodiversity

Today biodiversity is seriously treathened because of the high rate of animal and vegetable extinction.

Stockbreeding generates serious effects on biological diversity and it contributes to the loss of certain species, ths making the consequences of deforestation, soil degradation, pollution and climate change even worse.

Its repercussions are also due to the high number of livestock raised today that accounts for 20% of the biomas of all living animals in the world. Moreover, livestock occupy 30% of the territory that was inhabited only by wild animals in the past.

What are the most serious effects of livestock on biodiversity?

This grass-based type of farming has adverse effects on wild fauna (for instance, it bothers and threatens predators like wolves and foxes and the nighbouring protected areas), but its worst consequence is linked to the increase in agricultural activity that has changed the use of soil and has led to the abandonment of grass-based livestock breeding in the developed countries, especially in Europe.

Over the last few years numerous studies were carried out in order to find the best way to protect biodiversity.

What are the causes of biodiversity loss ?

The main cause of biodiversity loss is attributable to human impact on the Earth’s ecosystem all over the world. Human activity, in fact, has significantly changed our planet because it has exploited spieces through fishing and hunting, changed the biogeochemical cycles and forced species to migrate from one place to another.

Man is blamed for the extinction of certain species for different reasons. The impact of agriculture on terrestrial ecology, for instance, has had a great impact on this process.

The agricultural conversion of the territory, which has deducted seizable land surfaces from forests, meadows and moist environments, has oversimplified the complicated ancient structure of biomes and ecosystems.

However, industrialization and urbanization have also played a key role in the extinction of species. In particular, during the last three or four centuries, human demographic growth has recorded an underpresedented rate, which has let to an environmental transformation in terms of concreting, industrialization and degradation of the territory, thus completely changing the appearance and the ecological quality of habitats.

Another crucial factor that contributes to biodiversity loss is anthropogenic climate change. The accumulation in the atmosphere of man-made green house gasses, in fact, caused a rise in world temperatures that in certain regions has already brought about biological alterations, documented extinction phenoma and an indiscriminate decay of the environment.

Human beings deforest, set fire and overexploit natural resources; this changes habitats permanently. The building of roads, dams and canals and the expansion of cities has destroyed large areas all over the world.

Natural populations interact among themselves and shape ecosystems, which constitute the main mechanism of air, water and nutritious subastances recycling that is of vital importance for life.

Why Biodiversity is so Important?

Every species has a particular function in the ecosystem.

Certain species can attain energy in different forms: they can produce organic materials, contribute to nourishing the ecocystems, protect the Earth from air pollution and regulate climate change.

Ecosystems play a fundamental role in the improvement of the production of resources, such as the fertility of soils, the pollination of plants and the decay of vegetables and animals. They also have a great impact on the environment: the purification of air and water, the control of weather conditions, like rainfall, drought and other environmental disasters.

Clearly, all these fundamental functions are of vital importance for human survival.

The more an ecosystem is rich in biodiversity, the more it is resistant to environmental stress.

Biodiversity of Species

When one talks about biodiversity, generally refer to this cathegory, because it indicates the diversity of different species that live in a specific environment.

The word species denotes a group of organisms that mate.

The biodiversity of species can be evaluated through the number of different animals that live in a specific area (richness of species), the number of specimen of a single species which live in a specific area (abundance of one species) and the evolutionary relationships between different species (taxonomic diversity).

For example, a human being and a chimpazee have 98% of genes in common, but as everyone knows, they also have characteristics that differentiate one from the other.

Certain areas of the Earth have a greater richness of species than others: at the equator, for instance, it is higher than in the pole regions and in the oceans the species are more numerous in proximity of the shores than in the abysses.

Biodiversity

The Earth is populated by an extraordinary quantity of different living beings.

Biodiversity or biological diversity is the term used to describe this variety of lives and all their natural processes.

Biodiversity specifies the variety of animal and vegetable species that live in the biosphere and it is the result of long evolutionary processes.

The elements which constitute biodiversity can be divided into three cathegories:

• genetic biodiversity
• biodiversity of species
• ecosystem biodiversity