Being warm and wet does wonders for life in the Amazon (Image: Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures/FLPA RM)

The United Nations has made 2010 its Year of Biodiversity. While there could be as many as 30 million species on this teeming planet, so far fewer than 2 million have been identified. That includes a staggering 114,000 catalogued in the past three years alone. Our exploration of life is just beginning. No wonder the UN is keen that this year should be one of celebration.

It is also time to take stock, though. Human activities are causing a mass extinction, but the right action now could pull life back from the brink. At last we are beginning to understand what generates biodiversity (this article, below) and what makes a good conservation programme (How to save an island). We can also predict how our activities today will shape biodiversity in the future (The shape of life to come). It is a sobering vision – but one that is still in our power to change.

DEEP in the western Amazon lies the Yasuni National Park. Packed within an average hectare of this dense, steamy Ecuadorian rainforest are more species of tree than are native to the US and Canada combined, as well as 150 types of amphibian and an estimated 100,000 insect species. “It’s hard to get very far, because every few minutes you see or hear something new,” says Matt Finer of Save America’s Forests, based in Washington DC. According to work by Finer and others, published in January, there are more different life forms in Yasuni than anywhere else in …