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Agence France-Presse

Unbridled consumption has decimated global wildlife, triggered a mass extinction and exhausted Earth’s capacity to accommodate humanity’s expanding appetites, the conservation group WWF warned Tuesday.
From 1970 to 2014, 60 per cent of all animals with a backbone – fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals – were wiped out by human activity, according to WWF’s “Living Planet” report, based on an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations scattered across the globe.
“The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse,” WWF International director general Marco Lambertini said.
“The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening.”
For freshwater fauna, the decline in population over the 44 years monitored was a staggering 80 per cent.
China reverses 25-year ban on trade and use of rhino horns and tiger bones, alarming conservationists
Regionally, Latin America was hit hardest, seeing a nearly 90 per cent loss of wildlife over the same period.
Another data set confirmed the depth of an unfolding mass extinction event, only the sixth in the last half-billion years.
Depending on which of Earth’s lifeforms are included, the current rate of species loss is 100 to 1,000 times higher than only a few hundred years ago, when people began to alter Earth’s chemistry and crowd other creatures out of existence.

Measured by weight, or biomass, wild animals today only account for four per cent of mammals on Earth, with humans (36 per cent) and livestock (60 per cent) making up the rest.
Ten thousand years ago that ratio was probably reversed.
“The statistics are scary,” said Piero Visconti, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria and one of 59 co-authors of the 80-page report.
“Unlike population declines, extinctions are irreversible.”
For corals, it may already be too late.
Back-to-back marine heatwaves have already wiped out up to half of the globe’s shallow water reefs, which support a quarter of all marine life.
Even if humanity manages to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) – mission impossible, according to some scientists – coral mortality is likely to be 70 to 90 per cent.
A 2 degrees increase world would be a death sentence, a major UN report concluded last month.


Half-a-century of conservation efforts have scored spectacular successes, with significant recoveries among tigers, manatees, grizzly bears, bluefin tuna and bald eagles.
“If we didn’t make those efforts, the situation would have been much worse,” Lambertini said.
But the onslaught of hunting, shrinking habitat, pollution, illegal trade and climate change – all caused by humans – has been too much to overcome, he acknowledged.
“Scientists call it the ‘great acceleration’,” he said.
“It is the exponential growth over the last 50 years in the use of energy, water, timber, fish, food, fertiliser, pesticides, minerals, plastics – everything.”
The pace of population increase – long taboo in development and conservation circles – also took off around 1950, the date scientists have chosen as the “gold spike”, or starting point, for a new geological period dubbed the Anthropocene, or “age of man”.
‘Feedback loops’ of climate events could push Earth into a hothouse state, scientists warn
In looking for answers, conservationists are turning to climate change for inspiration.
“We need a new global deal for nature,” said Lambertini, noting two key ingredients in the 195-nation Paris climate treaty.
“One was the realisation that climate change was dangerous for the economy and society, not just polar bears,” he said.
Similarly, he argued, threatened ecosystem services long taken for granted – drinkable water, breathable air, heat-absorbing oceans, forests that soak up CO2, productive soil – are worth tens of trillions of dollars every year.
“A healthy, sustainable future for all is only possible on a planet where nature thrives and forests, oceans and rivers are teeming with biodiversity and life,” said Lambertini.
The Paris Agreement, negotiated under the UN convention on climate change, also set a clear target: global warming must be held to “well below” 2 degrees, and 1.5 degrees if possible.
The parallel UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), by contrast, has lots of targets running out to 2020 which are not only too weak, but – with one possible exception – will probably not be met, Lambertini said.
“The CBD is failing,” he said.
But an upcoming meeting of the 195-nation body could be the beginning of a “revolution” that will see the Convention re-engineered in 2020 into “a new deal for Nature”.


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Conservation

Earth’s wildlife population plummeted a staggering 60 per cent in 40 years, WWF report says

The WWF and partners have tracked population changes in Earth’s animal species for decades. News from the latest ‘Living Planet’ report, released Tuesday, is more grim than ever. File photo: Nasa

A polar bear stands on the ice in the Franklin Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Saturday, July 22, 2017. While some polar bears are expected to follow the retreating ice northward, others will head south, where they will come into greater contact with humans _ encounters that are unlikely to end well for the bears. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

China reverses 25-year ban on trade and use of rhino horns and tiger bones, alarming conservationists

A male Siberian tiger. China has reversed a 25-year-ban on the trade in and medical use of tiger bones. Photo: Handout

(FILES) This file photo taken on May 20, 2016 shows South African veterinarians applying bandage and stitches to a poached de-horned rhinoceros that was left to die by poachers on a ranch in Bela Bela some 150 KM north of Johannesburg in Bela Bela district. Sedated, blindfolded, her ears plugged with cotton-wool, "Hope" the rhino breathes heavily as veterinarians work to repair a gaping wound left by poachers who hacked off her horns. / AFP PHOTO / MUJAHID SAFODIEN

News

World


‘Global deal’ urgently needed to save nature, WWF warns
‘The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse’



Earth’s wildlife population has plummeted a staggering 60 per cent in 40 years, the conservation group WWF said.


Climate change

Earth’s wildlife population plummeted a staggering 60 per cent in 40 years, WWF report says

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} ‘Global deal’ urgently needed to save nature, WWF warns ‘The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse’

‘Global deal’ urgently needed to save nature, WWF warns

‘The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse’