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Natural resource managers have articulated “health” narrowly and vaguely as the condition of the biophysical environment. It is too tempting for natural resource managers to take data generated from rapid assessment techniques of biophysical condition (like species richness) as surrogates for “biodiversity.” This paper takes the view that these common applications of the terms “health” and “biodiversity” obscure a meaningful search for the relationships between biodiversity, human health, and the socioeconomic well‐being of human communities. Using examples of landscapes and inland waters in Australia, we argue that the biodiversity of inland waters and human health are linked in at least two ways. Biodiversity, and its endemic features, contribute to a person's attachment to a particular place and become part of a person's identity. Loss, destruction, or change in a location has the potential to affect an …