Europe has a wide variety of ecosystems with thousands of different plants, birds, fish, animals and insects. We call this biodiversity. Unfortunately, some of the species are becoming increasingly rare or are even threatened with extinction, as pollution damages their health and roads and cities destroy their natural habitats. We must prevent this happening and protect biodiversity so that we can all continue to enjoy the natural world.
| What the European Union does | What YOU can do |
| Find out what the European Union has done and is doing now, to protect natural ecosystems. | What can YOU do to help care for nature where you live? |
Ecologists study nature by looking at the way different animal and plant species live together within a specific area called a habitat. In Europe, they have defined about 2500 different habitats.
Extinction can be a natural process, but over the last century the rate of extinction has increased 1000-fold! Today, almost half the mammals in the European Union and more than one-third of reptile, bird and fish species are endangered.
Some species are declining at an alarming rate because people are damaging and destroying the places where they live.
Human activities must stop harming the environment - yet we do not want to give up the standard of living people have achieved in European countries. So we need to find ways to care for the natural world and improve our quality of life at the same time.
