Answers to Why Save Biodiversity?

• 'Goods' refers to the use of other life forms as fuel, fibre or medicine.
• 'Services', include pollination, nutrient recycling and global homeostasis.
• 'Knowledge' is the notion that every species has something interesting about it, and the extinction of an organism before it can be studied is like burninng a book or part of library that you have never read.
• Finally, the 'psycho-spiritual' value of an organism is what it contributes to our sense of well being.

Vincristine is a 'good' as it has value because it is used as medicine for the treatment leucemia.

Gaia is the earth's homeostatic system and the services that it provides.

The case of the passenger pigeon straddles both 'knowledge' and the 'psycho-spiritual'.The huge flocks of passenger pigeons have gone forever. We have lost something that could have been studied. In relation to the size of their flocks we have also lost something awe inspiring, something that makes us wonder, and in this sense we have lost something that could potentially add to our happiness.

The spiritual value of rare animals described by Wilson(2006) obviously belongs to the 'pyscho spiritual', as does the notion of biophilia (Wilson and Kellert,1990)and the transformative value of nature put forward by Norton(1987).