Much publicity has been given to the rate at which species of plants and animals are disappearing, with biodiversity being continually reduced as a result. There is general agreement on the need to preserve biodiversity, but sentiment alone will not provide the motivation needed.
It is now becoming more and more clear that biodiversity has provided a vast array of biological molecules that have been perfected by millions of years of evolutionary forces.
It also becomes increasingly clear that many potentially valuable biological molecules are still hidden in countless plant, animal and other species, and that reducing biodiversity reduces these resources irreversibly. Britain's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is targeting and sponsoring much work which is revealing novel biomolecules with potentially valuable properties. | 
