Why Biodiversity Matters? It’s Not About Orangutans.

Cute Orangutan

We love the orangutan.

We do. They’re cute, endangered, and photogenic enough to make you pause your doomscroll and go, “awww.”

But here’s the truth: biodiversity is not about flagship species.

It’s about systems.

It’s about threads in a living web that holds our food, water, air, and economies together — and most of those threads don’t have big brown eyes or their own NGO campaign.

Biodiversity Is the Software of Life

Forget the “green scenery” framing.

Biodiversity is functionality.

A coral reef isn’t just beautiful — it’s a storm shield, a pharmacy, and a fish nursery.

A fungus in Kalimantan you’ve never heard of might one day break down plastic, or cure a disease, or save a rice harvest.

But if we keep valuing nature based on cuteness or rarity, we’ll miss the point entirely.

It’s the Invisible Species That Make the System Work

Most of biodiversity is unseen, unnamed, unglamorous.

Microbes. Mycorrhizal fungi. Insects. Seagrass.

The stuff holding soil together, regulating rainfall, decomposing your waste.

Losing them doesn’t make headlines — until it crashes a crop cycle or collapses a fishery.

The Problem with Token Conservation

Too often, we treat biodiversity like a charity cause.

“Save the whales!” “Protect the tigers!”

Meanwhile, entire ecosystems are being stripped of resilience, quietly and legally, for profit.

The irony?

Those same ecosystems are the asset base we need for food security, carbon storage, disaster protection, even national stability.

What We Should Be Valuing

We need to move past guilt-based conservation.

Start asking:

• Can this wetland absorb flooding for 3 villages?

• How many pollinators support this rice system?

• What’s the carbon lock-in value of this mangrove per hectare?

In short:

How do we stop seeing biodiversity as decoration — and start seeing it as infrastructure?

💬 In Conclusion: Orangutans Matter, But…

So do termites. And sea cucumbers. And soil microbes.

If we want a resilient planet, we need to go beyond cute.

Because what makes an ecosystem work isn’t always what makes it Instagrammable.

This post is part of the EcoNexus Understory — reflections from the ground, the lab, and the gaps in between.