What is the importance of having ecological balance?

Question

What is the importance of having ecological balance?

Answer 1

The ecological balance is the equilibrium between, and harmonious coexistence of, organisms, including plants, animals & human life and their environment.  If the balance gets tipped in any direction, it will have an adverse effect on the rest.

For example:  

"Humanity's destruction of tropical habitat for agriculture, logging and other development has inflated earth's normal background extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times.

Of an estimated 7 million plant and animal species on earth, about 85 percent live on land with about two-thirds of them in the tropics, mostly the rainforests. The current rate of forest loss is about 1 million square kilometers every 5 to 10 years and accelerating, with several times that area being damaged by fires and selective logging.  At this pace, the tropical forests will be gone well before the end of the century, along with over half of all earth's species."

Worst case scenario , if it goes unchecked, ultimately, the world as we know it would cease to exist.  World hunger would escalate beyond where it already is, more and more of earth's inhabitants, (including humans) would die off.  Mass extinction would be the end result.

Lots more detail in the source link.