A diverse ecosystem can provide many utilitarian and intrinsic services. Our ecosystems provide us with goods, services, and information. Goods includes fod, fuel, fiber, medicine, and even organic pesticides. Services are everything from pollination, recycling of organic wastes, fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, and regulation of the atmosphere. Beyond utilitarian goods, services, and information, a diverse world provides humans with aesthetic beauty to enjoy.
Conserving biodiversity is advantageous for both the human and non-human world.
Local diversity may increase as non-native species establish in new ecosystems, but world biodiversity will decrease as rare species are displaced by invaders. In Hawaii, where the pre-human rate of introduction was one species per 100,000 years, when Polynesians arrived the rate jumped to 1 species per 50 years, and after European colonization the rate exceeded one species per 0.25 years. Through the increased movement of species around the earth and the loss of biodiversity, the earth runs the risk of becoming more homogenous. The natural borders established by evolution, geography, and climate are eliminated when humans move species around the globe, such that unique species in isolated environments are put in direct competition with non-natives that have no natural predators or pests. In the continental US, unique environments, like fragments of forest, lakes, and hotsprings, mimic islands in their isolation and may be just as vulnerable to introduced species.