Earth’s wildlife populations have disappeared at a ‘catastrophic’ rate in the past half-century

||| FROM WASHINGTON POST |||

Earth’s wildlife populations have fallen on average by a “catastrophic” rate of 73 percent in the past half-century, according to a new analysis the World Wildlife Fund released Wednesday.

The WWF and the Zoological Society of London track 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles around the world through the Living Planet Index, and the database shows the extent to which human activity is decimating them. Freshwater populations fell by an average of 85 percent, according to the new Living Planet report, while terrestrial populations by 69 percent and marine populations by 56 percent in the five decades between 1970 and 2020.

“It really does indicate to us that the fabric of nature is unraveling,” Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist said of the report’s findings.

Shaw added that the global decline of these animal populations is likely to have cascading effects.

“Vertebrate populations underpin ecosystem health and the services we get from ecosystems like stable climate, abundant and clean water, healthy soils to grow food, productive fisheries that supply people with protein,” she said. “If you have that kind of decline in vertebrate populations around the globe, you’re going to have troubles supporting and sustaining human health and well-being over time.”

The worst declines were in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a 95 percent average drop, followed by Africa, 76 percent, and Asia and the Pacific, 60 percent. But the report said that is at least partly because in Europe, Central Asia and North America — whose animal populations declined by more than a third — people living there had already wiped out nature on a wide scale by 1970.

Euan Ritchie, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, who was not involved in the report, said working in conservation involves “experiencing trauma on a daily basis.” He compared it to an art lover’s reaction if three-quarters of the contents of the Louvre had disappeared.

“This is what’s happening to our nature; we’re watching it be destroyed before our eyes,” Ritchie said.

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