Human activities that threaten biodiversity

I, as a marine scientist, am fishing. There we do not sow what we harvest, but rather we collect resources, just like in mining. There are attempts to control fishing, but we often do not have enough data to determine sustainable catches until it is too late. The fever in Newfoundland, for example, disappeared before we could act. Today we do not know what the impact of seafloor trawling by trawl nets will be. Fishing has expanded to Antarctica, which is a problem because the fish, like most fish in frozen waters, grow slowly. The final factor in reducing species richness is the introduction of exotic species, which we will discuss in the next lesson.

Let's go back to marginal capacity. The message is that if everyone on Earth can do more with less, especially in places where we use much more today, we can be on the path to more easily managing marginal capacity for Earth's inhabitants, with a decent quality of life. In our world of finite resources, it is important to strike a balance between

human

s and other species. We must learn to do more with less to preserve this natural balance: the natural wealth of species that keeps ecosystems and ours healthy. Academy of Sciences, California