Freshwater Biodiversity and Why It's Important

Biodiversity is the life all around us. Big and small.

We are here on the banks of the Sequatchie River,

which is a really diverse river here in the Southeast U.S,

which is just an underwater rainforest of aquatic life.

We have fishes, snails, mussels, crawdads, all different kinds of biodiversity.

The reason freshwater has so many types is there's just a

wide range of freshwater habitats from big rivers to mountain streams,

springs, caves, everything in between.

Why should we care about this amazing aquatic

biodiversity we have in the southeastern United States?

We're humans, we need water.

The aquatic ecosystem helps clean our water.

Every species is of brick in that foundation.

When we lose species, we lose those bricks.

Now we have to pay more for drinking water.

We can't go swimming and we can't eat the fish we catch.

So, keeping all these little critters and these rivers around

helps them and it helps us.