Explain how biodiversity is important for human and explain what is conservation?

Conservation of biodiversity is protection, upliftment and scientific management of biodiversity so as to maintain it at the optimum level and derive sustainable benefits for the present as well as future generations.

Reasons for Conserving Biodiversity : There are many reasons for conservation of biodiversity but all reasons are equal important.

They can be grouped into three categories which are as follows:

Narrowly utilitarian : These are based on obvious reasons.

Humans derive countless direct economic benefits from the nature like food (cereals, pulses and fruits), firewood, fibre, construction material, industrial products (tannins, lubricants, dyes, resins and perfumes) and products of medicinal importance.

More than $25 \%$ of the drugs currently sold in the market worldwide are derived from plants and $25,000$ plant species are used in traditional medicines.

Moreover biodiversity rich countries expects to reaps more benefit from the increasing resources put into bioprospecting exploration of molecular, genetic and species-level diversity for obtaining products of economic importance.

Broadly utilitarian : According to this argument, biodiversity play a major role in ecosystem services that nature provides.

Some of these are :

$(i)$ Production of oxygen, eg. Amazon forest produce $20 \%$ of the total oxygen in the earth's atmosphere via photosynthesis.

$(ii)$ Pollination of flowers without which fruits and seeds are not produced is provides by pollinator

layer i.e. bees, bumble bees, birds and bats.

$(iii)$ Control of floods and soil erosion.

$(iv)$ Intangible benefits of nature like aesthetic pleasures of watching spring flower in full bloom walking through thick forest, listening to bulbul's song etc.

- Ethical Argument : Every species has an intrinsic value even if it is not of any economic value to us.

- It is our moral duty to care for their well being and pass on our biological legacy in good order to future generations.

Moreover, many plants like tulsi and peepal have religious importance as well.