Is biodiversity a renewable or nonrenewable resource?

Answer 1

Wild animals are self sustaining through reproduction, but they are probably non-renewable, if the primary meaning of renewable is 'inexhaustible'. The estimate is that 99% of all species that ever lived on earth are now extinct. Depending on whether or not they are consumed in some way during their use as a resource, wildlife could be seen as non-renewable.

Answer 2

Biodiversity is an abstract idea rather than a concrete noun, so it is probably not considered a resource in the physical sense. However, the concept does include both renewable and nonrenewable resources (and will be discussed ad-nauseum for the forseeable future, so in that sense it is a renewable idea). One of the basic ideas behind biodiversity is that plants and animals are healthier and have a better survival rate in ecosystems that contain a large number of other plants and animals, among many other things like minerals in the soil, insect population balances (hence the diversity part). Almost all animals do very poorly with only one food source, and almost all plants do very poorly if the soil they are growing in doesn't have a way of replenishing the minerals and things that the plant uses (I'm not sure if the phrase biostagnation has been coined yet).