Why Is It Important To Resilience?

One might ask why try to do anything if extinction is natural and there have already been five other mass extinctions in the history of the planet. It is important to remember that humans also live on the Earth and we will be highly affected by a mass extinction. Biodiversity is extremely important to the functionality of an ecosystem. It allows for food security for animals, including humans. It also is important for resilience. If an ecological disturbance were to happen such as a drought, flood, or disease, resilience is the ability of an ecosystem to recover from that disturbance. Biodiversity is key to resilience since species can shift their roles in an ecosystem and this is much easier to do with a high variety of species. A mass extinction
The act was signed in 1973, and it provides funds for conserving threatened and endangered species. Both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oversee the act. Currently, there are 2,340 species, both foreign and in the United States, listed as either endangered or threatened (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2017b). The total federal and state expenditures not including land acquisition costs for 2015 was $1,507,815,932 (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016). Nine of those species received no funding. For those that were actually given money, the lowest amount allotted was one hundred dollars to nine species, while the highest was $72,507,053 to the Chinook Salmon on the Snake River (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016). 155 species were given over one million dollars (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2016). In fact, those 155 species, which accounted for 10% of the listed species in 2015, received 88% of the
There is a huge gap between the money needed by proposed budgets and the money currently budgeted (Gerber, 2016). However, money is key to the recovery of species. The amount of money given to a species is the best way to predict if they will recover or not since species with adequate funds are 2.5 times more likely to reach their recovery goals (Gerber, 2016). What money the government does give is poorly allocated and riddled with bias. A large amount of money goes towards those species that are in the most danger of going extinct (Wilson, Joseph, Moore, & Possingham, 2011; McIntyre, Barrett, Kitching, & Recher, 1992). There is an additional bias towards certain animal species. Plants and invertebrates account for 73% of the listed endangered species but only receive 12.5% of funding (Male & Bean, 2005). In general, people give more money and attention to mammals and birds rather than reptiles, amphibians, and fish (McIntyre et al., 1992). Mammals and birds are seen as more charismatic so donors will give more towards those species. The result is that the majority of endangered species do not receive adequate funding (Male & Bean, 2005; Wilson et al.,