BIODIVERSITY!

At the bottom of this post is a link to a youtube video. The embedding was disabled; this video is part 1 of a documentary by my hero, David Attenborough, about biodiversity, evolution, and Charles Darwin. It's on youtube, in 6 parts, and in HD. SWEET. It's a damn good documentary.
However it doesn't talk at all about the biodiversity crisis. Biodiversity is simply the diversity of species, as well as the diversity and variety within species. According to the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), there are estimated to be approximately 14 million species. Of that, 1.75 million have been catalogued by western science. New species continue to pour in. Yet a huge amount of those species are endangered, threatened, at risk, or on the brink of extinction. Humanity has caused 6X, the sixth major extinction event, called "The Holocene Extinction Event", which is ongoing right now. The most threatened group of animals today are the amphibians. Long considered an indicator species due to their permeable skins, they are among the most diverse, ecologically essential, and vulnerable of animal groups.
Biodiversity is incredibly important. The overall biodiversity in an ecosystem is an indicator of its health and its balance. We depend on biodiversity and ecosystems for food, air, water (clean water), shelter, waste disposal and absorption, medicine, and many of our other resources such as wood/paper. These are all generated by natural ecosystems. They provide the most vital natural processes to us, and we are dependent on those processes. Among the most undervalued members of our living planet are insects, invertebrates, molds and fungi, and bacteria and viruses. Yet they are all unfathomably important. Invertebrates of all kinds are among the most valuable. The basis of most life is photosynthesis; thanks to plants and algae. The bottom of the food chain. Insects and invertebrates, on land and in the oceans, are fundamental to the food chain. If they were to be seriously threatened, the ecosystems we depend on would collapse. Of the invertebrates, one that is of extreme importance are: earthworms. There are many different species of worms, but what makes them crucial is that they eat decaying plant material, and turn it into nourishment for other plants. Soil fertility is dependent on biodiversity, worms, insects, fungi, and bacteria. The recycling of the natural world.
However, while the disappearance of species is a natural process (no species will last forever), the pace of extermination has been rapidly increasing over the last few hundred years. But like, from 1600-1900 the pace was about 1 species every 4 years. Now, it's 1-3 species EVERY DAY. In the past 100 years, 50% of the Earth's original forests and 50% of its wetlands have disappeared. Tropical species have been reduced by 40%, tropical rainforests being one of the most diverse, finely balanced, essential, and vulnerable ecosystems of all. In Canada, home to about 71,500 known species, we only have much data on 1600 species, and of that, 529 animal and plant species are at risk. 80% of the species decline is related to habitat destruction and degradation. Our government of course is still pursuing its path of inefficiency, resource mismanagement, overharvesting, depletion, pollution, and habitat destruction.
I am also re-posting a second video, which I've put up a couple of times before, of E.O. Wilson, one of the world's top entymologists and microbiologists, giving a speech and receiving the TED Prize. It's a favourite TED talk of mine, and one that is very pertinent to the issue of biodiversity. Biodiversity decline in agriculture is also a huge problem. For more info on the issue, here's the URL for the CBD:

http://www.cbd.int/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfnttoIrMg