At the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in the year 1992, Biodiversity was defined as ?the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.?

Biodiversity is not something that developed overnight. The massive diversity of all living organisms such as plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms reflect an evolutionary history that started from 3.5 billion years ago.

Biodiversity in Bangladesh

The majority of the nation?s land is formed with the river alluvium from the Brahmaputra and the Ganges and their tributaries, which consist around flood plans (80%) with hilly ares (12%) in a subtropical monsoon climate. Geographically, Bangladesh is near the Indo-Burma region, which is actually one of the world?s ten hot-spot areas and is supposed to have 7,000 endemic plant species. Due to its unique geo-physical location, our nation is exceptionally characterised by a rich biological diversity.  It estimated that our region alone has around 5,700 angiosperms including 68 woody legumes, 130 fiber yielding plants, 500 medicinal plants, 29 orchids, three species of gymnosperms and 1700 pteridophytes, according to the official records made in Bangladesh. Even 2,260 plants have been recorded in the hill regions of Chittagong, which is actually one of the most floristic region in South Asia. Bangladesh also has a rich faunal diversity. Around 113 species of mammals and more than 628 species of birds have been recorded.

Conservation

In order to preserve and promote this rich biodiversity, a wide variety of measures can be taken both in-situ and ex-situ methods. In-situ conservation is the one-site conservation or the conservation of the natural populations of plant or animals species including forest genetic resources in natural population of tree species.

Whereas, Ex-situ is the process of conserving endangered species of plants and animals which our outside its natural habitat.

Immediate action needs to be taken to conserve this biodiversity.  Individuals and the community can play a crucial role in this process such as protecting existing biodiversity, defending the threatened species and reducing scopes for harming the biodiversity.

In  order to survive, we all must conserve all the species on earth. We need action from individual to the government's. It is high time we join forces and act now, otherwise it might be too late.