From Andrew Beattie, From Andrew Beattie, Macquarie University
Achim Steiner’s call for conservationists to broaden their outlook on biodiversity (16 April, p 28) is welcome, but overlooks one of the most important areas in which “the tension between agricultural development and conservation” needs to be resolved.
Agriculture is heavily reliant upon the roughly 95 per cent of species that are largely ignored. Microbes and invertebrates may not be as exciting as the feathers, fur and flowers most people think of as biodiversity, but they constitute the soil and marine food chains that contribute massively to most of humanity’s food, and few are thinking of the conservation of them.
Sydney, Australia
