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Although the term biodiversity emerged from the pool of obscure jargon quite a few years ago, it is still enshrouded with significant ambiguity. At one extreme, some people use it as a loose synonym for nature. At the other extreme, some people reduce biodiversity to simplistic parameters, such as the number of species. Conservation organizations, both private and public, must navigate these waters with great care. They need to engage a pulic that loves nature as embodied in beautiful places and charming creatures - elk in a Yellowstone meadow or snow leopards on a Himalayan snowfield - while expounding the values of species and ecosystems that have "swamp," "rat," or "spider" in their titles. A the same time, to undertake their work in a systematic and rigorous manner, conservation organizations need to be able to quantify their goals and accomplishments. Some things are easy to measure, such as the areas of new reserves, but biodiversity writ large is not one of them.