Biodiversity is all forms of life found on earth. Biodiversity includes the variety of plants and animals found on this planet including the locations where they are found. All the variety of life is not evenly distributed on earth it depends on a number of factors including atmosphere, climate and tempreature, geographical and regional locations. Generally it is seen that tropical regions have more life than polar region.

Earth is blessed with balance of nature. This is a small but important structure which is also called food chain. Biodiversity helps to maintain this chain. For example: Snakes that we all fear from and does not take as a welcoming animal. But snakes feed on rats. If there are no more snakes then the we would end up having terrible rat problem. Biodiversity is important to maintain this balance of nature so that no one thing will become too powerful and cause a terrible situation.

India is one of the world’s ‘mega diversity’ countries. It is ranked ninth in the world in terms of higher plant species richness.
India has tremendous biodiversity, genetic as well as of species and ecosystems. It contains some 7 per cent of the world’s biodiversity on 2.5 per cent of the Earth’s surface. This diversity can be at­tributed to the vast variety of landforms and cli­mates resulting in habitats ranging from tropical to temperate, and from alpine to desert.

The number of plant species in India is esti­mated to be over 45,523 representing about 11.8 per cent of the world’s flora. These include over 17,500 flowering plants of which 4,950 species are endemic to the country.

There are many threats to biodiversity some of them are:-

1) Habitat Loss:
Destroying of natural surviving environment of species due to over exploitation because of anthropogenetic  human activities results in habitat loss. These activities include setting up of dams, construction of industries, commercial activities like mining which involves deforestation, clearing out of land which results in loss of vegetation, degradation of land and loss of wildlife.

2) Poaching of wildlife:
Illegal hunting and killing and capturing of wild animals or illegal harvesting of wild plants species is called poaching which is an environmental crime of natural species. These are mainly done for making profits from trading or selling of bones, teeth, skull, skin of wild animals. Poaching is the reason for endangered animals to become extinct completely. Extinction of animals leads to disruption of food chain which affects ecosystem as a whole.

3) Man Wildlife Conflict:
It is actually the result of interaction between wildlife and human beings. As the population is rising at a high rate. People need place to live for which they destroy natural habitats which causes the shrinkage of habitats. This conflict between humans and wildlife for living space and food which are the basic necessities of life.So, basically this conflict is because of the limitation of resources for the satisfaction of needs of ever growing population.

Reference: www.biologydiscussion.com