In the current scenario, the health of our environment is deteriorating with each passing day. Thus, immediate measures must be taken to "conserve" it. But before that, it's important to discern and distinguish between the types of conservation techniques.
The protection, preservation, management, or restoration of natural environments and the ecological communities that inhabit them. Conservation is generally held to include the management of human use of natural resources for current public benefit and sustainable social and economic utilization.
Need for Biodiversity Conservation: - Conservation of biological diversity leads to conservation of essential ecological diversity to preserve the continuity of food chains.
- The genetic diversity of plants and animals is preserved.
- It ensures the sustainable utilization of life support systems on earth.
- It provides a vast knowledge of potential use to the community.
- A reservoir of wild animals and plants is preserved, thus enabling them to be introduced, if need be, in the surrounding areas.
- Biodiversity conservation assures sustainable utilization of potential resources.
There are two types of Conservation Mechanisms :
IN-SITU CONSERVATION : When we conserve and protect the whole ecosystem, its biodiversity at all levels is protected. E.g. we save the entire forest to save the tiger. This approach is called in situ (on site) conservation. Faced with the conflict between development and conservation, many nations find it unrealistic and economically not feasible to conserve all their biological wealth. On a global basis, this problem has been addressed by eminent conservationists. They have indentified maximum protection for certain ?biodiversity hotspots? regions with very high levels of species richness and high degree of endemism (that is, species confined to that region and not found anywhere else). Initially 25 biodiversity hotspots were identified but subsequently nine more have been added to the list, bringing the total number of biodiversity hotspots in the world to 34. These hotspots are also regions of accelerated habitat loss. Although all the biodiversity hotspots put together cover less than 2 percent of the earth?s land area, the number of species they collectively harbour is extremely high and strict protection of these hotspots could reduce the ongoing mass extinctions by almost 30 per cent. In India, ecologically unique and biodiversity-rich regions are legally protected as biosphere reserves, national parks, sanctuaries, reserved forests, protected forests and nature reserves. India now has 14 biosphere reserves, 90 national parks and 448 wildlife sanctuaries. Plantation, cultivation, grazing, felling trees, hunting and poaching are prohibited in biosphere reserves, national parks and sanctuaries. However, when there are situations where an animal or plant is endangered or threatened and needs urgent measures to save it from extinction, ex situ (off site) conservation is the desirable approach. EX-SITU CONSERVATION : In this approach, threatened animals and plants are taken out from their natural habitat and placed in special setting where they can be protected and given special care. Zoological parks, botanical gardens,wildlife safari parks and seed banks serve this purpose. In recent years ex situ conservation has advanced beyond keeping threatened species. Now gametes of threatened species can be preserved in viable and fertile condition for long periods using cryopreservation techniques, eggs can be fertilized in vitro, and plants can be propagated using tissue culture methods. Seeds of different genetic strains of commercially important plants can be kept for long periods in seed banks.
In situ conservation = on the site conservation without displacing the affected organism. Ex situ conservation = conserving the organism in an artificial habitat by displacing it from its natural habitat. Thus, keeping in view the needs of the biodiversity, a suitable conservation mechanism must be chosen
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