Maintaining Biodiversity and Sustainability

Having learned about the threats to biodiversity, this lesson focuses on what can be done to protect and restore it. You need to understand the range of strategies used at local, national and international levels to maintain biodiversity and promote sustainability — meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This is an important part of AQA GCSE Biology Topic 7: Ecology.

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What Is Sustainability?

Sustainability means using resources in a way that meets current needs without depleting them for future generations. In ecology, this means:

• Maintaining healthy ecosystems
• Protecting species from extinction
• Using natural resources at a rate that allows them to be replenished
• Reducing pollution and waste

Exam Tip: The AQA specification specifically asks you to understand how human activities affect biodiversity and the importance of maintaining it. Be prepared to discuss both the problems and the solutions.

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Conservation Strategies

1. Breeding Programmes

Captive breeding programmes aim to increase the population of endangered species by breeding them in controlled environments (such as zoos and wildlife parks) before releasing them back into the wild.