Conservation begins with protection. The first priority of conservationists is to protect the area being threatened. Protection comes when the area achieves protected status under a government body. Coral reefs, for example, are protected by the National Park Service. This status puts in place laws that limit the amount of human interaction with the area, allowing the ecosystem to refurbish itself. Enforcing these laws is more complicated than it sounds; many of these areas are remote. The Amazon rain forest is a threatened ecosystem, teeming with near-extinct species. Although the area is protected, massive logging still takes place. Consequently conservationists support programs that provide education and training that provides local people with other crop options that do not involve timber harvesting. Brazil nut harvesting is one example of a sustainable practice that does not require farmers to destroy the trees.
The definition of a natural ecosystem is broad; any system supporting a group of living organisms can be defined as an ecosystem. The planet Earth is a macrocosm of an ecosystem. Humans, as part of this ecosystem, have a natural responsibility to participate in the give and take of resources with other living things. On a smaller scale, each individual is part of her own ecosystem; she is involved in the exchange of resources with other living things inside a family unit and community.
Gardens and greenhouses are manufactured ecosystems. The introduction of new life into an area provides sustenance for other life. When a gardener cultivates his plants he is inviting insects, rodents and other plant life to inhabit an ecosystem. However, this same gardener can prevent this life from prospering through the use of repellents and traps. But this too is part of the ecosystem as the living organism of the human is protecting plant growth. Greenhouses are an isolated ecosystem, semi-sheltered from the outside elements. The internal environment of a greenhouse gives a gardener a broader spectrum of plant life to cultivate. The temperature and humidity of a greenhouse are controlled by the gardener, allowing her to re-create tropical, arid or temperate climates inside the protective walls.
In a study produced by the Tampere University of Technology, Mirva Peltoniemi and Elisa Vuori reveal business ecosystems as an innovative approach to structural modeling inspired by biological ecosystems. Business ecosystem structures are defined by self-organization, evolution and adaptation, actions that also take place in the natural world.