Biodiversity. A big part of our life. Costa Rica, for example, has 0.1% of the worlds surface but 4% of the worlds wildlife. With this in mind, what are some ways that we can protect biodiversity? Right now our family is travelling around Costa Rica. It is a unique country due to all the wildlife that surrounds it.
What is biodiversity? Biodiversity basically means the variety of life in the world or in a particular habitat or ecosystem. For example, when we were in Costa Rica we saw, Monkeys, Caimans, Crocodiles, Scarlet Macaws, a Toucan and many more types of animals.
Costa Rica’s main source of income. Ecotourism. Tourisum in Costa Rica began to develop in the 1980’s and thirty years later it is now the country’s main source of money contributing more than US$1.7 billion per year. It is estimated that up to 80% of all visitors to the country come to do eco-tourism related activities. Ecotourism started out slowly, but by 1995 there were more than one hundred and twenty five government protected sites.
Costa Rica’s government is big on biodiversity. For example, when our family was in Jaco, we saw a turtle on the beach. Beside the turtle were two policemen. When the turtle looked like it was struggling to dig its hole, the policeman helped it. When the turtle started to lay its eggs, the policeman gathered them into a bag and took them away to a hatchery. If the policeman hadn’t of done this, most likely dogs would of sniffed out the eggs or people may of come and got them to cook up.
Costa Rica is a great example of protecting biodiversity. Almost one third of the country is under some sort of environmental protection with thirty five national parks, covering eleven percent of the country. That is one way to protect biodiversity, making national parks so people don’t come down cut cut all the trees and do other dumb stuff like that.
Coming to the end, I think it’s about time that we realise that at the end of the day heaps of habitats and ecosystems are being destroyed by humans and that we should think of more solutions to try and help protect our biodiversity such as protecting the land with national parks, protecting the young endanger species. Also, Costa Rica for example is making money out of there mindset to protect there wildlife.
By Mia
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