It is not that, and this is what I mean. Biodiversity is a means to stable, durable ecosystems. If you act as though it is a goal worth pursuing in and of itself, you end up making questionable decisions overall.
Utter horseshit.
We generally don't actually know what biodiversity can be removed from an ecosystem without destabilizing it.
For example, we have the capability to eradicate mosquitos. This could potentially save millions of lives. We've been debating doing this for decades, but we haven't. Scientists have done studies, and we don't
think that mosquitos are a significant food source for any animal, and we don't
think that killing them would significantly affect any ecosystem, but we don't
know. And because we don't know we haven't done it because if we're wrong there's a potential to collapse entire ecosystems because we fucked with the food chain.
Of course we try to study these things, but funding these studies becomes political. The moment budgets are mentioned people complain that these studies are a waste of money because why the hell would we care about some snail, or some minor fish that we don't even eat, when it may turn out that these animals are a cornerstone of the food chain of their particular environment and we don't know.
So yes, all biodiversity is worth preserving because we don't actually know what makes a stable and durable ecosystem.
