Pic: WWF
Global wildlife populations have halved in just 40 years, according to new research by scientists at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
Creatures across land, rivers and the seas are being decimated as humans kill them for food in unsustainable numbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats, the WWF’s Living Planet Report 2014 found.
The key findings are:
- Populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52% since the 1970s.
- Freshwater species populations have suffered a 76% decline, an average loss almost double that of land and marine species.
- The worst declines have been observed in the Tropics.
The report draws upon the Living Planet Index, a database maintained by the Zoological Society of London, which monitors trends in over 10,000 populations of 3038 species since the 1970s. It also looks at how human consumption levels…
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The Secular Jurist 
Unbelievable. This is just so shocking! I knew things were bad, but half the world’s wildlife populations gone in only forty years seems unimaginable! Most of us feel powerless to stop this awful tragedy.
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Indeed, it seems like we’re riding a runaway train with no way to get off. And unfortunately, calling it a “tragedy” may be understating the problem. Elizabeth Kolbert’s descriptor as Earth’s sixth great extinction event is apropos (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/books/review/the-sixth-extinction-by-elizabeth-kolbert.html).
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