Biodiversity

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the issue of biodiversity through a review of an article, "Hotspots and the Conservation of Evolutionary History" written by Wes Sechrest and Thomas M. Brooks and published in "The National Academy of Sciences". The paper contends that the article stops short of attempting to identify any possible solutions to this impending problem. The paper claims the it does help to illuminate some of the shortcomings of current conservation strategies; namely, a conservation strategy focused upon preservation of single species ignores much larger trends of extinction that mankind imposes upon the natural world. The paper explains that the ideologies that the study relies upon are implicit and the article itself merely warns that the consequences of ruining seemingly insignificant expanses of land possess the potential to be quite severe.

From the Paper:

"An article written by Wes Sechrest and Thomas M. Brooks and published in The National Academy of Sciences reveals the results of a study they conducted investigating the varying levels of biodiversity distributed throughout the world. The authors employ a fairly novel approach in their measurements of biodiversity, specifically, relying upon two methods approximating the levels of evolutionary history endemic to twenty-five terrestrial "hotspots." The significance of evolutionary history as a measuring stick is that it is associated with the past importance of particular geographic locations, and implies that future evolution is threatened if these locations are threatened."

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