Biodiversity is the technical name used to describe the fact that there is a great variety of different forms of living things on earth.  A wider description is given by CCW (Countryside Council for Wales) and can be seen on their web site, follow the link below for a full version of the text shown here.

http://www.ccw.gov.uk/Generalinfo/index.cfm?Action=ResourceMore&ResourceID=9&Subject=Habitats

During the 1990s, biodiversity has become a commonplace word in our language, but what does it mean?

Simply, it means 'the variety and abundance of life on Earth'. Biodiversity conservation has become an extremely useful form of shorthand for perhaps the most complex of all the issues facing man in the new millennium, namely how to meet the needs of a growing human population without compromising the variety and abundance of plants and animals and their habitats. They, like us, depend for survival on a healthy environment, and we in turn depend on them.

So biodiversity encompasses the entire spectrum of life on land and in water, ranging from bacteria, fungi, lower plants and flowering plants to insects, amphibians and reptiles, fish, birds and mammals. This diversity extends to variation within species as well as between them - as with the many races and variations within our own species, Homo Sapiens. Biodiversity also embraces the plant and animal assemblages that make up the range of habitats we see about us and which constitute the land and seascapes and ecosystems in which we live.

Biodiversity is important because the viability and productivity of soils and waters, the climate and other life support systems depend on the interaction between complex groups of species and their environment. The variety of life on Earth also provides a biological storehouse of medicines, new foods and materials, with genetic variety being crucially important in many fields, one example being the development of disease resistance in crop plants. The presence of a wide variety of plants and animals, together with the landscapes which they mould, also provides a great source of inspiration and well-being. And, because of the sheer complexity and variety of life on Earth, biodiversity may also be important for reasons which we may not even yet know, let alone be able to express.

For all these reasons, it is right that we care for the diversity of life and it is within the capacity of each individual to make his or her own contribution to its conservation.

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