A delicious meal includes all kinds of ingredients with just the right amounts of everything. Biodiversity is like that – it’s the the way that a balance of a variety of animals, plants and micro-organisms work together to form an ecosystem.
Australia has an amazing mix of landforms: rainforests, deserts, mountains, coral reefs, beaches and bushland – making it possible for more than 600,000 animal species and 18,500 plant species to survive. Some plants and animals are found nowhere else on Earth!
Environmental change can affect biodiversity. In fact, rapid environmental change can cause big problems like mass extinctions.
There are many things we can do to protect and improve biodiversity to keep ecosystems in natural balance.