Monitoring and maintaining the environment - OCR Gateway Positive human impacts on biodiversity

Human interaction within ecosystems can have both positive and negative impacts on the levels of biodiversity. The impact of an increase in the human population, including increased waste, deforestation, peat bog destruction and climate change has been to reduce biodiversity. Conservation, the preservation of ecosystems and the organisms within them, helps reverse this.

Scientists and concerned members of the public help maintain biodiversity by:

• introducing breeding programs to help preserve endangered species
• protection and development of new endangered habitats, often by making National Parks
• replanting hedgerows because there is higher biodiversity in them than the fields they surround
• reducing deforestation and the release of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane
• recycling rather than dumping waste in landfill sites