Study Says Humanity Has Killed 50% of the World’s Wildlife Since 1970
According to a study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), humans are the worst. In case you didn't already realize that as a result of Two and Half Men, Pitbull, the Real Housewives franchise, etc. The WWF reports that the number of wild animals has decreased by a whopping 50 percent over the past 40 years, and we only have ourselves to blame.
The WWF's report offers a much more depressing estimate than previously reported. The agency used something called the Living Planet Index (LPI), which incorporates data from 10,000 populations of more than 3,000 vertebrate species. The data was provided to the WWF by the Zoological Society of London.
The WWF's report shows that of all species, freshwater populations are disappearing the fastest, at about a 75 percent decline since 1970, the first year the study took into account. "Habitat loss and water pollution are big problems there, although so are changes in water level," reported The Huffington Post. "In South Australia, for instance, humans have been extracting freshwater from the wetlands for irrigation — which, in turns, has led to increases in water salinity and declines in fish and shorebirds like the curlew sandpiper." Things were slightly better for land species and other waterlife, which decreased by 39 percent over the same time period.
The worst areas, according to the report, are in the warmer locations of our planet. "Biodiversity is declining in both temperate and tropical regions, but the decline is greater in the tropics," reads the WWF report. "The tropical LPI shows a 56 percent 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 percent."
Ken Norris, director of science at the Zoological Society of London, said that people need to start paying attention to what we've done. "If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news," Norris told The Guardian. "But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way we choose to live. We have lost one half of the animal population and knowing this is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a call to arms and we must act now."
The WWF's hope is that their report — which is extremely dire — serves as a wakeup call. But the problem with that is that people don't like to spend their tax dollars to save animals. Therefore, with little money dedicated to saving them, nothing changes. As we said, we're the worst.
[Image via Flickr - Shankar S]
