Читать книгу Fundamentals of Conservation Biology - Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. - Страница 75

Species cannot survive in isolation from other species; they are all part of some ecosystem. Therefore all ecosystems have value because the species they support have value. In other words, at a minimum the value of an ecosystem is the summation of the value of all its constituent organisms. This idea is simple enough, but it is not the end of the story. We must also consider that ecosystems probably have special attributes that emerge from interactions among the component species and make them valuable beyond the sum of species‐specific values. Let us consider each of the major types of values that we evaluated in Chapter 3 from this perspective.