Make a Difference

• What biodiversity is and why it is important for you, your family and the things that you value.
• The effect your actions have on biodiversity.
• What you can do to help conserve biodiversity.

To learn more about biodiversity:

• Book - Biodiversity, by Edward O. Wilson, National Academy Press
  
• Website - Union of Concerned Scientists’ Frequently Asked Questions about Biodiversity

To learn about the effects of your actions:

• Book - The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists, by Michael Brower and Leon Warren, 1999. Three Rivers Press
  
• Website - Living with Biodiversity

Make choices to help biodiversity:

Choices in our activities and the food we eat, the water and energy we use, and the products we buy can really help conserve biodiversity. Our choices can help species directly, for example when we volunteer for a conservation group or choose not to eat or buy products from vulnerable species. They can also help conserve biodiversity in general, such as when we buy food produced in a sustainable manner to protect important pollinating insects and soil organisms, and reduce our fossil fuel consumption to cut pollutants like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

• Join natural history societies, museums, botanic gardens and conservation organizations.
  
• Plant for wildlife and pollinators in your garden - choose native species and avoid herbicides and pesticides.
  
• Reuse and recycle - to use fewer resources and create less waste.
  
• Ride bikes, walk, and use mass transit to use fewer fossil fuels and pollute less (see www.transact.org).
  
• Buy Smart/Shop Green:
  
  • Use and buy less to reduce your consumption.
    
  • Buy US products (where species protection laws are stronger than some other countries).
    
  • Avoid buying species under threat, such as some rainforest woods (for example, teak, mahogany, balsa) and overexploited fish (see www.seafoodchoices.com/seasense).
    
  • Buy more sustainably produced food and products (for example, organic, local, in season, recycled, less-packaged, unbleached, undyed).
    
• Check how your elected officials vote on biodiversity issues, see the League of Conservation Voters.

Biodiversity Links

For Adults

About Biodiversity

• Association for Biodiversity Information
  
• Biodiversity Project: What is Biodiversity?
  
• Conservation International: Biodiversity Basics
  
• Environmental Literacy Council: Biodiversity
• IUCN Redlist of Threatened Species
  
• Union of Concerned Scientists: Biodiversity
  
• World Conservation Union: Biodiversity is Life!
  

Naturalist and Conservation Societies

• Nature Conservancy
  
• National Audubon Society
  
• National Geographic Society
• National Parks Conservation Association
  
• Wildlife Conservation Society
  
• World Wildlife Fund US
  

Museums, Botanic Gardens and Zoos

Find your local:

• Zoo and Aquarium
  
• Natural History Museum (also zoos and botanic gardens)
  
• Botanic Garden or Arboretum

For Kids and Educators

About Biodiversity and Activities for Kids

• American Museum of Natural History. Biodiversity: It Takes All Kinds to Make a World
  
• Audubon Society: Kids and Education
• National Geographic Geography Action!
  
• National Geographic Kids
  
• US EPA Explorers Club
  
• Wildlife Conservation Society: Kids Go Wild
  
• World Wildlife Fund: Kids

For Teachers

• Discovery: Looking for Biodiversity
  
• National Wildlife Federation: Schoolyard Habitats