NBC News brings us a story about the most recent devastating report from the World Wildlife Fund in their article,
The world populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles fell by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010, far faster than previously thought, the World Wildlife Fund said on Tuesday. The conservation group's Living Planet Report, published every two years, said humans' demands were now 50 percent more than nature can bear, with trees being felled, groundwater pumped and carbon dioxide emitted faster than Earth can recover. "This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live," Ken Norris, Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London, said in a statement.
... The average 52 percent decline was much bigger than previously reported, partly because earlier studies had relied more on readily available information from North America and Europe, WWF said. The same report two years ago put the decline at 28 percent between 1970 and 2008.
From the original report entitled, Living Planet Index, we learn additional disturbing facts.
The state of the world’s biodiversity appears worse than ever. Population sizes of vertebrate species measured by the LPI have halved over the last 40 years.
The Living Planet Index (LPI), which measures trends in thousands of vertebrate species populations, shows a decline of 52 per cent between 1970 and 2010. In other words, the number of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish across the globe is, on average, about half the size it was 40 years ago. This is a much bigger decrease than has been reported previously, as a result of a new methodology which aims to be more representative of global biodiversity.
Biodiversity is declining in both temperate and tropical regions, but the decline is greater in the tropics. The tropical LPI shows a 56 per cent reduction in 3,811 populations of 1,638 species from 1970 to 2010. The 6,569 populations of 1,606 species in the temperate LPI declined by 36 per cent over the same period. Latin America shows the most dramatic decline – a fall of 83 per cent.
Habitat loss and degradation, and exploitation through hunting and fishing, are the primary causes of decline. Climate change is the next most common primary threat, and is likely to put more pressure on populations in the future.
Freshwater species show the greatest average decline of 76 percent.
When are we going to figure out that we are part of an inter-dependent ecosystem we need to survive?
How much more environmental devastation do we need to see before we wake up and change our ways?
Earth is the only planet we have, and this is not a video game with a "replay" button.
Many of the changes we need to make to turn this situation around will take decades or even centuries. Time has run out.
Read More
