Approximately one million species currently face extinction because of human activity. Even for humans who do not value nature for its own sake, the impending wave of extinctions is a serious crisis. One out of five people rely on wild species for their jobs or for food, and billions more use wood for cooking and other day-to-day activities.
Conservation is not just an ecological problem — it is also an economic problem, which a recent paper in the journal Nature Sustainability observed (per the World Economic Forum) covers an "estimated US $44 trillion in global economic production." Because various industries want to continue profiting by extracting and demolishing natural resources, however, environmentalists are struggling to prevent the mass extinctions.
