        The arguments set forth about the importance or lack of importance of biodiversity boil down to how one perceives nature. A man in a white button down shirt can see a field of flowers as a sanctuary for microorganisms, arthropods, animals and of course, plants. A man in a peace sign shirt can look at this same field and proclaim “Ahah! This is a magnificent spot to have anthropocentric habitats for economic activity.” While this is a biased view point on my part due to the dialogue, the matter of the importance of biodiversity comes to down how one views it in relation to themselves. 
        A person can view themselves as the environment, unrelated to the environment (a higher viewpoint of mankind), or equal to the environment (being stewards of the environment for allowing us to develop and rise to the top of the food chain). These viewpoints can then be subjected to economic thinking and values are placed on aspects of nature. For instance in South Africa, hunting still takes place, but it’s rare and expensive for prospective hunters. The funds raised from that hunting goes to conservation of more of those species affected by raising capital to buy lands and/or supplies for those species. All of the original mammal species are still in original habitats within South Africa. Some species have been lost, but that was before the 50s when conservation biology was starting to take hold as a field.
This is an example of how conservation of bigger species can be achieved, but what about the smaller guys? The smaller guys are the plants, bugs, mice/rodents, frogs, fungi, and of course, microorganisms. These are not typical examples of species people are looking to conserve, if they even think about these species at all. These species hold major ecological functions, such as decomposition conducted mainly by the fungi and helped out by microorganisms, bugs such as earthworms and plants. The ecological services provided by species across multiple landscapes is imperative to the continual existence of further species down the generational lines. It’s a feedback loop that affects all species, and humanity has been interfering with ecosystems for generations. Recently, humanity has realized that our actions can cause mass devastation to various species through habitat destruction, stratification, climate change, and overexploitation. 
Monetary value can be made from nature, especially through agricultural, forestry and agroforestry plots. These are “renewable” resources, which can be restored over time through proper care and management. “Non-renewable” resources such as through mining, fracking, mountain-top removal coal, overexploitation of species, etc. are resources that cannot come back in most cases. The monetary value placed on the non-renewable resources is higher usually, due to their lack of supply and the high demand. For renewable resources, the price is rising over time to maintain these resources due to bad practices or climatic changes. The rise in the price of renewable resources may be a point to bring up to someone who believes the worth of those resources is insignificant compared to the non-renewable. The viewpoints of monetary value on resources has always been a struggle for societies new and old. Conserving game species, water resources and land has been around for awhile, now we are starting to understand other levels of biodiversity and recognize they need to be protected as well.
Let’s conserve biodiversity and recognize the actions we have on our local community. We can decide to over exploit for temporary comfort or we can choose to look deeper realizing how much nature has given us. It’s time for us to start taking care of nature, looking at communities in different perspectives and figuring out what we should or shouldn’t do to help it out. Perhaps it is too much human interaction with the environment that is causing species loss? We’ll figure it out eventually, right?
