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habitat loss
'Catastrophic and Saddening': Research Shows US Butterfly Population Dropped 22% in Two Decades
"It's pretty shocking, really, that we've lost that much biodiversity in such a short time," said one of the study authors.
Mar 06, 2025
A landmark study released Thursday in the journal Science found that the number of butterflies in the United States declined dramatically between 2000 and 2020.
"The prevalence of declines throughout all regions in the United States highlights an urgent need to protect butterflies from further losses," according to the abstract of the study, which was authored by over 30 researchers from around the country.
Between 2000 and 2020, total butterfly abundance in the contiguous United States fell by 22% across 554 recorded species. The study also reported widespread species-level decline, in addition to overall abundance decline. According to researchers, 13 times as many butterfly species are declining as they are increasing.
"It's pretty shocking, really, that we've lost that much biodiversity in such a short time," said Eliza Grames, a conservation biologist at Binghamton University in New York and one of the study authors, who spoke with WBUR about the findings.
The survey used data from multiple sources, including North American Butterfly Association, which is the "longest-running volunteer-based systematic count of butterflies in the world," as well as data from Massachusetts Butterfly Club, which "carries out organized field trips and records individuals' reports across the state in which participants identify and record butterflies seen."
Scientists and dedicated amateur enthusiasts helped collect the data, according to The Washington Post, which spoke with some of the researchers.
"Scientists could not get all the data we used," Nick Haddad, an ecologist and conservation biologist at Michigan State University who worked on the study, per the Post. "It took this incredible grassroots effort of people interested in nature."
The study identified pesticide use, climate change, and habitat loss as drivers of the decline.
The research echoes other scientific findings that have recorded widespread loss of insect abundance more generally, a phenomenon that's sometimes called the "insect apocalypse." Bugs do many important things, like pollinating crops and keeping soil healthy. "As insects become more scarce, our world will slowly grind to a halt, for it cannot function without them," wrote biologist Dave Goulson in 2021.
Entomologist David Wagner, who was not involved in the study, told the Post in an email that butterflies function as a "yardstick for measuring what is happening" among insects generally. He said the findings of the study were "catastrophic and saddening."
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Human Activity Pushing More Than 1 in 5 Migratory Species Toward Extinction: UN
"The global community has an opportunity to translate this latest science of the pressures facing migratory species into concrete conservation action," said one U.N. official.
Feb 12, 2024
As world governments gathered in Uzbekistan Monday for the United Nations conference on migratory species, they centered the theme "Nature Knows No Borders"—an idea that a new landmark report said must take hold across the globe to push policymakers in all countries and regions to protect the billions of animals that travel each year to reproduce and find food.
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) marked the opening of the 14th Conference of the Parties (CMS COP14) to the United Nations biodiversity treaty by releasing the first-ever State of the World's Migratory Species report, showing that nearly half of migrating species are declining in population.
The crisis is especially dire for more than 1 in 5 species that are threatened with extinction, and 70 species listed under the CMS which have become more endangered, including the steppe eagle, the Egyptian vulture, and the wild camel.
The populations of nearly all species of fish listed in the U.N. treaty, including sharks and rays, have declined by 90% since the 1970s.
The two biggest drivers of endangerment and threatened extinction are overexploitation—including incidental and intentional capture—and habitat loss, and both are directly caused by human activity.
Seven in 10 CMS-listed species are threatened by overexploitation, while 3 in 4 of the species are at greater risk of dying out due to habitat loss, as humans expand energy, transportation, and agricultural infrastructure across the globe.
The climate crisis and planetary heating, pollution, and the spread of invasive species—thousands of which are introduced by humans—are also major threats to migratory species, the report says.
"Unsustainable human activities are jeopardizing the future of migratory species—creatures who not only act as indicators of environmental change but play an integral role in maintaining the function and resilience of our planet's complex ecosystems," said Inger Andersen, undersecretary-general of the U.N. and executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP). "The global community has an opportunity to translate this latest science of the pressures facing migratory species into concrete conservation action. Given the precarious situation of many of these animals, we cannot afford to delay."
Migratory species "reinforce" the fact that nature does not observe borders put in place by humans, Andersen added in a video posted on social media, and humans must work across borders to ensure these species are protected.
According to the report, nearly 10,000 of the world's key biodiversity areas are crucial for the survival of migratory species, but more than half are not designated as areas that must be conserved—and 58% are under threat due to human activities.
Mapping and taking adequate steps to protect "the vital locations that serve as breeding, feeding, and stopover sites for migratory species" is a key priority, said the CMS in a statement.
"Migratory species rely on a variety of specific habitats at different times in their lifecycles," said Amy Fraenkel, CMS executive secretary. "When species cross national borders, their survival depends on the efforts of all countries in which they are found. This landmark report will help underpin much-needed policy actions to ensure that migratory species continue to thrive around the world.”
In addition to increasing understanding of migration paths and minimizing human infrastructure in the pathways, the report recommended that policymakers "strengthen and expand efforts to tackle illegal and unsustainable taking of migratory species"; scale up efforts to tackle climate change and light, noise, chemical, and plastic pollution; and consider expanding CMS listings to include more at-risk migratory species in need of international attention.
"There are many things that are needed to be done on addressing the drivers of environmental change, such as agriculture for habitat destruction, the sprawl of cities, we have to look at rail, road, and fences," said Fraenkel. "One of the most important things for migratory species is something we call ecosystem integrity: they need particular sites to breed, feed, and travel. If those sites cannot be accessed or don’t exist any more, then it's obviously going to be detrimental."
The report focused on 1,189 migratory species identified by the U.N. as needing protection, but found that another 399 migratory species are either threatened or near threatened with extinction.
"People might not realize that whales, lions, gorillas, giraffes, and many birds are migratory species," Fraenkel said.
At the opening ceremony of CMS COP14, Andersen called on policymakers to live up to the conference's theme "by ensuring free passage of migratory species and by ensuring that, through multilateralism, we reach a hand across every border to ensure long-term sustainability, for people and for planet."
Reversing population decline is possible, the report emphasized, pointing to coordinated local action in Cyprus that reduced illegal bird netting by 91% and "hugely successful" conservation and restoration work in Kazakhstan, "which has brought the saiga antelope back from the brink of extinction."
"I ask parties to consider how to work in harmony with other processes for mutually assured success," said Andersen, "all in the interests of sustainable economies and societies."
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'Very Bad News': Human Activities Increased Extinction Rate of Species Groups by 35 Times
"What we're losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe," one study author said.
Sep 19, 2023
In what researchers call a "biological annihilation," human activities are driving entire groupings of vertebrate species to extinction at a rate 35 times what it would have been without human interference.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, found that 73 genera—the next thickest branch from species on tree of life—had been lost since A.D. 1500. Without the mass exploitation of the natural world that took off around that date with European colonization, the number lost in the past 500 years would have been only two, and it would have taken 18,000 years to reach 73 extinctions.
"Such mutilation of the tree of life and the resulting loss of ecosystem services provided by biodiversity to humanity is a serious threat to the stability of civilization," study co-authors Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University and Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico wrote in the abstract.
Or, as Ehrlich summarized it in all caps on social media, "New approach to extinction crisis, very bad news."
Previous attempts to grapple with the sixth mass extinction had focused on the number of species lost or at risk. But looking at genera can provide a clear view of the "magnitude and impact" of these losses, the study authors wrote.
Why? Because when one species dies, other species in the same genus can fill its niche in the ecosystem and preserve much of its genetic code, Ceballos told Stanford News. However, when a genus disappears, it leaves a larger gap in both the ecosystem and the genetic record—one that it can take evolution tens to millions of years to fill.
For example, when the passenger pigeon genus went extinct in 1914, the white-footed mouse lost its main food competitor. This combined with a decrease in large predators caused white-footed mouse populations to explode, which has been fatal for humans, because white-footed mice are the primary carriers of Lyme disease.
"We are alarmist because we are alarmed."
"By losing all these genera, we are losing the foundations of the planet to have life in general and human life in particular," Ceballos told The Guardian.
There's also an inherent sadness to the disappearance of so much unique life.
"What we're losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe," Ehrlich told Stanford News.
Ceballos and Eherlich expected genera extinction rates to be lower than species ones, but found in fact that they were about the same. The pair looked specifically at birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Beyond the 73 extinct genera, the planet also lost 10 families and two orders: the elephant bird and the New Zealand moa. Birds overall lost the most genera, with mammals coming in second.
What's more, if the climate emergency, the illegal wildlife trade, and habitat loss continue and all endangered genera go extinct by 2100, their extinction rate would jump to 354 times what it would have been without these human actions.
"People say that we are alarmist by saying that we expect a collapse," Ceballos told The Guardian. "We are alarmist because we are alarmed."
However, both authors emphasized that it was not too late to act.
"As dramatic as the results are, what is important to mention is that we still have time," Ceballos added. Though he noted that "the window of opportunity is closing rapidly."
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MONARCH Act Introduced to Ensure 'Beloved Pollinator' Is Around for Future Generations
"In only a few decades, a migration of millions has been reduced to less than two thousand butterflies."
Mar 17, 2021
A group of bipartisan lawmakers introduced two bills on Wednesday to boost conservation of the western monarch butterfly to save the population from total collapse.
The legislation comes at a critical moment for the iconic species. The Xerces Society said in January after its latest annual western monarch count that 1,914 monarchs butterflies were recorded overwintering on the California coast--a figure the conservation group said reflected a staggering 99.9% drop from numbers in the 1980s and was an indication the species was heading toward extinction.
"In only a few decades, a migration of millions has been reduced to less than two thousand butterflies," Stephanie McKnight, a conservation biologist with the Xerces Society, said at the time.
The butterflies also have no endangered species protections, neither at the state or federal level.
Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-ORe), who are leading the reintroduction of the The Monarch Action, Recovery, and Conservation of Habitat Act (MONARCH Act) and the Monarch and Pollinator Highway Act, are hoping to stop the precipitous decline.
The MONARCH Act would direct $12.5 million per year to projects focused on conserving the butterfly and an additional $12.5 million per year to implement the Western Monarch Butterfly Conservation Plan, a proposal of conservation strategies organized by the the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
The Monarch and Pollinator Highway Act would establish a federal grant program for "pollinator-friendly" roadsides.
Panetta, in a statement Wednesday, lamented the "potential extinction of this magnificent pollinator" and said the pieces of legislation were "a small example of how we must continue to fight the effects of the climate crisis by working to preserve the future of a species that means so much to our ecosystem and to us on the Central Coast."
According to Stephanie Kurose, a senior policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity, the MONARCH Act gives "these beautiful orange-and-black butterflies a fighting chance at survival."
The measures were welcomed by other environmental experts like Dr. Sylvia Fallon, senior director of wildlife at NRDC, who highlighted the multiple threats the butterflies are facing.
"These bills will provide a lifeline for monarch butterflies whose populations have declined dramatically due to pesticide use, climate change, and habitat loss," said Fallon.
"We need comprehensive conservation plans that help restore the milkweed and overwintering habitat monarchs depend on, or risk losing them forever in as little as two decades," she warned. "This legislation is an important part of ensuring future generations can continue witnessing one of wildlife's most astounding migrations."
The butterfly crisis was unmistakable this winter in Pismo State Beach Monarch Butterfly Grove, which is in the district of Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), who co-introduced the measures with Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) in the House.
While 6,700 monarchs were spotted at that location in 2019, a mere 200 were seen this winter.
Visiting the grove last month, Carbajal pointed to the then-forthcoming legislation and said that he, along with Panetta and Merkley, were "trying to not only draw attention to (the species' risk of extinction) by writing letters as we did to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife to allocate funds, but moving legislation forward that will actually do what needs to be done: protect (the butterflies) and enhance the conservation itself."
"We're trying to yell at the top of our lungs, 'We're in crisis,'" said Carbajal. "This is a species in my district that is likely to go extinct unless we do something about it, and I feel it's my responsibility to scream loudly."
In a statement Wednesday, Carbajal warned again that the butterflies "are on a path to extinction" unless urgent action is taken.
"The MONARCH Act and Monarch Pollinator Highway Act," he said, would make "critical investments in conservation projects so we can restore their habitats and preserve this beloved pollinator for future generations to experience and enjoy."
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In Memoriam: A Planet of Missing Beauties
"The skies are emptying out."
Mar 24, 2020
The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago.
Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either "first" or "ever saw" in quotation marks. After all, I was already 12 years old and, even as a city boy, I had seen plenty of birds. If nothing else, New York, where I grew up, is a city of pigeons (birds which, by the way, know nothing about "social distancing").
Nonetheless, in a different sense, at age 12 I saw (was struck by, stunned by, awed by) that bright red bird. I was visiting a friend in Connecticut and, miraculously enough, though it was 1956, his parents had a bird identification book of some kind in their house. When I leafed through it, I came across the very bird I had seen, read about it, and on going home wrote a tiny essay about the experience for my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Casey (one of those inspirational figures you never forget, just as I'll never forget that bird). I still have what I wrote stuffed away amid ancient papers somewhere in the top of my bedroom closet.
Six decades later, in this grim coronavirus March of 2020, with my city essentially in lockdown and myself in something like self-isolation, I have to admit that I feel a little embarrassed writing about that bird. In fact, I feel as if I should apologize for doing so. After all, who can doubt that we're now in a Covid-19 world from hell, in a country being run (into the ground) by the president from hell, on the planet that he and his cronies are remarkably intent on burning to hell.
It was no mistake, for instance, that, when Donald Trump finally turned his mind to the coming pandemic (rather than denying it) as the economy he had been bragging about for the previous three years began to crash, one of the first groups he genuinely worried about didn't include you or me or even his base. It was America's fossil-fuel industry. As global transportation ground down amid coronavirus panic and a wild oil price war between the Saudis and the Russians, those companies were being clobbered. And so he quickly reached out to them with both empathy and money -- promising to buy tons of extra crude oil for the nation's strategic petroleum reserve ("We're going to fill it right to the top") -- unavailable to so many other endangered Americans. At that moment he made it perfectly clear that, in an unfolding crisis of the first order, all of us remain in a world run by arsonists led by the president of the United States.
So, a cardinal? Really? That's what I want to focus on in a world which, as it grows hotter by the year, will only be ever more susceptible to pandemics, not to speak of staggering fires, flooding, extreme storms, and god knows what else. Honestly, given a country of closed schools, self-isolating adults, and the sick and the dying, on a planet that seems to be cracking open, in a country which, until recently, couldn't test as many people for Covid-19 in a couple of months as South Korea could in -- yes, this is not a misprint -- a day, where's my sense of proportion?
A Secret Life
Still, if you can, bear with me for a moment, I think there's a connection, even if anything but obvious, between our troubled world and that flaming bird I first saw so long ago. Let me start this way: believe it or not, birds were undoubtedly the greatest secret of my teenage years.
On spring weekends, my best friend and I would regularly head for Central Park, that magnificent patch of green at the center of Manhattan Island. That was the moment when the spectacular annual bird migration would be at its height and the park one of the few obvious places in a vast urban landscape for birds to alight. Sharing his uncle's clunky old binoculars, my friend and I would wander alone there (having told no one, including our families, what we were doing).
We were on the lookout for exotic birds of every sort on their journeys north. Of course, for us then they were almost all exotic. There were brilliant scarlet tanagers with glossy black wings, chestnut-and-black orchard orioles (birds I wouldn't see again for decades), as well as the more common, even more vivid Baltimore orioles. And of course there were all the warblers, those tiny, flitting, singing creatures of just about every color and design: American redstarts, blackburnians, black-and-whites, black-throated blues, blue-wingeds, chestnut-sideds, common yellowthroats, magnolias, prairies, palms, yellows.
And here was the secret key to our secret pastime: the old birders. Mind you, when I say "old," I mean perhaps my age now or even significantly younger. They would, for instance, be sitting on benches by Belvedere Castle overlooking Belvedere Lake (in reality, a pond), watching those very birds. They were remarkably patient, not to say amused (or perhaps amazed) by the two teenaged boys so eager to watch with them and learn from them. They were generous with their binoculars, quick to identify birds we otherwise would never have known or perhaps even noticed, and happy to offer lessons from their bird books (and their own years of experience).
And, for me at least, those birds were indeed a wonder. They were genuine beauties of this planet and in some odd way my friend and I grasped that deeply. In fact, ever since we've grown up -- though this year may prove to be the self-isolating exception -- we've always tried to meet again in that park as May began for one more look at, one more moment immersed in, the deep and moving winged beauty of this planet of ours.
Of course, in the 1950s, all of this was our deepest secret for the most obvious of reasons (at least then). If you were a boy and admitted that you actually wanted to look at birds -- I'm not sure the phrase "bird watch" was even in use at the time -- god knows what your peers would have said about you. They would -- we had no doubt of this -- have simply drummed us out of the corps of boys. (That any of them might then have had their own set of secret fascinations would never, of course, have crossed our minds.) All you have to do to conjure up the mood of that moment is to imagine our president back then and the kind of mockery to which he would certainly have subjected boys who looked at birds!
Now, so many decades later, in another America in which the coronavirus has already reached pandemic proportions (potentially threatening staggering losses, especially among old folks like me), in which the stock market is already tanking, in which a great recession-cum-depression could be on the horizon, and our future FDR -- that is, the president who helped us out of the last Great Depression in the 1930s -- could an over-the-hill 77-year-old former vice president, it seems odd indeed to write about beautiful birds from another earthly moment. But maybe that's the point.
Fini?
Think about it this way: as last year ended, Science magazine reported that, in North America, there were three billion fewer birds than in 1970; in other words, almost one out of every three birds on this continent is now gone. As Carl Zimmer of the New York Times put it, "The skies are emptying out." Among them, warblers have taken one of the heaviest hits -- there are an estimated 617 million fewer of them -- as well as birds more generally that migrate up the East Coast (and so have a shot at landing in Central Park). Many are the causes, including habitat loss, pesticides, and even feral cats, but climate change is undoubtedly a factor as well. The authors of the Audubon Society's most recent national report, for instance, suggest that, "if Earth continues to warm according to current trends -- rising 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 -- more than two-thirds of North America's bird species will be vulnerable to extinction due to range loss."
Extinction. Take that word in. They'll be gone. No more. Fini.
That, by the way, is a global, not just a North American, reality, and such apocalyptic possibilities are hardly restricted to birds. Insects, for instance, are experiencing their own Armageddon and while -- monarch butterflies (down 90% in the U.S. in the last 20 years) aside -- we humans don't tend to think of them as beauties, they are, among other things, key pollinators and crucial to food chains everywhere.
Or think about it this way: on Monday, March 8th, in my hometown, New York City, it was 68 degrees and that was nothing. After all, on February 19th, in Central Park, the temperature had hit a record-breaking 78 degrees in the heart of winter, not just the highest for that day on record but for the month of February, historically speaking. At the time, we were passing through a "winter" in which essentially no snow had fallen. And that should have surprised no one. After all, January had started the year with a bang globally as the hottest January on record, which again should have surprised no one, since the last five years have been the warmest ever recorded on this planet (ditto the last 10 years and 19 of the last 20 years). Oh, and 2020 already has a 50% chance of being the warmest year yet.
And by the way, soon after that 68-degree day, in our parks I began to notice the first crocuses and daffodils pushing through the soil and blooming. It was little short of remarkable and, in truth, would all have been beautiful, not to say glorious -- the weather, the flowers, the sense of ease and comfort, the springiness of everything -- if you didn't know just what such "beauty" actually meant on a planet potentially heating to pandemic proportions.
How sad when even what's still truly beautiful on this globe of ours increasingly tells a story that couldn't be grimmer. So, think of this as my in-memoriam essay about the planet I thought I grew up on and the birds I thought I knew. Consider it a kind of epitaph-in-advance for a world that, if the rest of us can't get ourselves together, if we can't rid ourselves of arsonists like Donald Trump and his crew or those fossil-fueled CEOs that he loves so much, may all-too-soon seem unrecognizable.
In the meantime, consider me -- semi-locked in my apartment -- to be, in my own fashion, in mourning. Not for myself, mind you, though I'm almost 76 and my years on this planet are bound to be limited, but for those I'll be leaving behind, my children and grandchildren in particular. This just wasn't the world I ever wanted them to inherit.
In truth, in this coronaviral moment of ours, our world is being transformed before our eyes into one of missing beauties. Given my teenage years, I want to leave my grandchildren the pleasure of entering Central Park in some distant May, long after I'm gone, and still seeing the brilliant colors of a scarlet tanager. That's my hope, despite everything.
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On Brink of 'Sixth Great Extinction,' Humanity Must Conserve or Die
'We are sawing off the limb we are sitting on.'
Jun 22, 2015
It's official: the planet is entering a "sixth great extinction" that even the most conservative estimates show is killing off species at rates far higher than the previous five mass die-offs--and humanity is both at fault...and at risk.
A joint study by scientists from several North American universities published last week in Science found that the rate of extinction for species in the 20th century was up to 100 times higher than it would have been without impacts of human activity, such as climate change, deforestation, and pollution.
Moreover, if those rates are allowed to continue, "life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.
"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event," said co-author Paul Ehrlich, the Bing professor of population studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead."
Scientists have long agreed that extinction rates have reached unparalleled levels since the last mass extinction, when the dinosaurs were killed off 65 million years ago, likely by a meteor crashing into Earth. For years, conservation groups have warned of increasing extinction risks faced by mammals, birds, and amphibians, which Harvard University ecologist Edward O. Wilson in 2010 called "the backbone of biodiversity."
But Friday's study shows "even with extremely conservative estimates, species are disappearing up to about 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions, known as the background rate."
The Stanford Report elaborated:
Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating "a global spasm of biodiversity loss." The answer: a definitive yes.
...As species disappear, so do crucial ecosystem services such as honeybees' crop pollination and wetlands' water purification. At the current rate of species loss, people will lose many biodiversity benefits within three generations, the study's authors write. "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting on," Ehrlich said.
"We were very surprised to see how bad it is," Ceballos told the Guardian on Friday. "This is very depressing because we used the most conservative rates, and even then, they are much higher than the normal extinction rate, really indicating we are having a massive loss of the species."
"It's really signalling we've entered a sixth extinction and it's driven by man," Ceballos said.
Avoiding a "true" sixth mass extinction, the researchers concluded, "will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to alleviate pressures on their populations--notably habitat loss, over-exploitation for economic gain and climate change. All of these are related to human population size and growth, which increases consumption (especially among the rich), and economic inequity."
There is still time to take fast action to conserve species, ecosystems, and populations--but that window is rapidly closing, the researchers warned.
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Planet on the Brink: Human Activity Killing the Planet's Life-Supporting Systems
WWF's State of the Planet report reveals alarming and avoidable biodiversity loss
Sep 30, 2014
Human activity has brought the planet's life-supporting systems to the brink of tipping points, causing an "alarming" loss in biodiversity and critical threats to the services nature has provided humankind.
So finds the newest state of the planet report (pdf) from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which offers a damning look on the health of the Earth.
"We're gradually destroying our planet's ability to support our way of life," stated Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF.
Among the report's findings is a dramatic loss in biodiversity. Its Living Planet Index, managed by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and based on over 10,000 populations of over 3,000 species, shows a 52 percent decline in global wildlife between 1970 and 2010. And that's a trend that "shows no sign of slowing down."
Among the causes of the decline are climate change, habitat loss and degradation, and exploitation.
Breaking these losses down further, the report states that populations of freshwater species have declined 76 percent, compared to losses of 39 percent each for marine species and terrestrial populations.
Region-wise, Latin America has suffered the biggest decline in biodiversity, with species populations plummeting 83 percent.
Global wildlife populations have declined over 50 percent between 1970 and 2010.The impacts of humankind's assault on the planet are not being felt equally, the report notes, as higher-income countries have an "ecological footprint" five times higher than those of lower-income countries. In fact, because of resource imports, high-income countries "may effectively be outsourcing biodiversity loss," stated Keya Chatterjee, WWF's senior director of footprint.
Looking at humanity's overall "ecological footprint," the report states that we need 1.5 planets to provide for the current demands on nature.
Water footprints are noted as well, and the report states that in some ares "such as Australia, India and USA ...life-giving aquifers are being severely depleted." Agriculture is responsible for the lion's share of use, accounting for 92 percent of the global water footprint
Because of the human activity changes is causing on the planet, the report states, "we can no longer exclude the possibility of reaching critical tipping points that could abruptly and irreversibly change living conditions on Earth."
The WWF stresses that these sobering statistics were not unavoidable, and that the challenges we now confront to effect change are not insurmountable.
"The scale of biodiversity loss and damage to the very ecosystems that are essential to our existence is alarming. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live," stated Professor Ken Norris, Director of Science at the ZSL.
As WWF's Roberts stated, "we already have the knowledge and tools to avoid the worst predictions. We all live on a finite planet and it's time we started acting within those limits."
To hear more about some of the details of the report, watch this video from ZSL:
Living Planet Report: Global Wildlife Populations Halve in 40 YearsGlobal wildlife populations have halved in just 40 years according to WWF and ZSL's Living Planet Report 2014. Find out more ...
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