Additionally, biodiversity is important because it represents the scope of nature's richness. Throughout human history, this richness has contributed to the well-being of humanity by providing food, materials, and medicines. Even the dominant industrial culture draws many of its most basic supplies from this biological storehouse. All of our foods have been made possible by biological diversity and many of our most basic medicines, such as aspirin, are derived directly from naturally occurring compounds. It would be foolish to imagine that our dependence on this fount of useful diversity has passed, and that the human race can now provide for itself independent of the natural world.
Biodiversity happens to be greatest in the world's primary tropical rainforests.
Destruction or fragmentation of these forests therefore contributes directly to a reduction in global biodiversity. Because many rainforest plants and animals have extremely limited ranges, operations as small as a single timber extraction can damage global Already the scale of biodiversity disruption engendered by the present generation of human activities ranks with the great prehistoric extinctions. Recovery from this level of disturbance will require tens of millions of years. The earth's atmosphere is an elaborate and delicately balanced cycle of gasses that protects and makes possible life on Earth. Among the gasses present in the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes an insulating capacity to the atmosphere and moderates heat loss to outer space.