Global wildlife populations have fallen by an average of 73% over 50 years, a new scientific assessment has found, as humans continue to push ecosystems to the brink of collapse.
According to WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Latin America and the Caribbean have recorded the steepest average decline in wildlife populations, with a 95% decline over the past two years. Living Planet Report. They are followed by Africa at 76%, and Asia and the Pacific at 60%. Europe and North America recorded the lowest decline since 1970, at 35% and 39% respectively.
Scientists said this was explained by the huge declines in wildlife populations in Europe and North America before 1970, which are now being mirrored in other parts of the world. They warned that as global warming accelerates, fueled by the tipping points of the Amazon rainforest, Arctic and marine ecosystems, future loss will increase rapidly, which could have catastrophic consequences for nature and human society.
Matthew Gould, chief executive of ZSL, said the report's message was clear: “We are at critical points for nature loss and climate change. But we know that nature can be restored if given the chance, and that there is still room for action.
The statistics, known as the Living Planet Index, are compiled from population trends of nearly 35,000 species of 5,495 species of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles from around the world, and have become one of the leading indicators of the global status of wildlife populations. In recent years, the metric has faced criticism for overestimating wildlife decline.
The index is weighted in favor of data from Africa and Latin America, which have experienced large declines but have reliable data on population. Despite data from Europe and North America showing less dramatic declines, this has the effect of driving the dramatic peak of the global decline.
Hannah Wauchope, a lecturer in ecology at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The weighting of the Living Planet Index is imperfect, but until we get a systematic sample of biodiversity globally, some form of weighting is necessary. We know that declines will continue as habitat destruction and other threats to biodiversity continue.”
Critics question the mathematical nature of the index's approach, but acknowledge that other indicators also show a major decline in the condition of many wildlife species around the world.
In a review of the index published in June by Springer Nature, scientists said it “suffers from a number of mathematical and statistical problems that lead to a bias towards apparent decline even for a uniform population”.
They continued: “This does not mean that there has not actually been an overall decline in vertebrate populations [but the] The current phase is the Anthropocene [epoch] characterized by complex changes rather than simple disappearance.”
The IUCN Red List has assessed the health of more than 160,000 plant and animal species, finding that nearly a third are at risk of extinction. Of those estimated, 41% of amphibians, 26% of mammals and 34% of conifers are threatened with extinction.
The code was published days before the Cop16 biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia, the first time since then that countries will meet to agree on a set of international goals to stop the free fall of life on Earth. Governments have not met a single biodiversity target in the history of UN agreements and scientists are urging world leaders to ensure this decade is different.
Susana Mohamed, CoP16 chair and Colombia's environment minister, said: “We must listen to the science and take action to avoid collapse.
“Globally, we are reaching points of no return and irreversibly affecting the planet's life support systems. We see the effects of deforestation and the alteration of natural ecosystems, intensive land use and climate change.
“The world is witnessing massive bleaching of coral reefs, loss of tropical forests, collapse of polar ice caps and drastic changes in the water cycle, the foundation of life on our planet,” he said.
Land-use change was the most important driver of wildlife population decline as agricultural frontiers expanded, often at the expense of ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. WWF-UK's director of science and conservation, Mike Barrett, said countries such as the UK were causing destruction by continuing to import food and animal feed grown in previously wild ecosystems.
“The data we have shows that the loss of natural habitats is driven by fragmentation. What we see through the statistics is an indicator of a profound change taking place in our natural ecosystems … they are losing their resilience to external shocks and changes. “We are now exaggerating climate change on these already degraded habitats,” Barrett said.
“I have been writing these reports for 10 years and it was difficult to write them. I was shocked,” he said.
