Humans have destroyed a tenth of the world’s remaining wilderness — an area the size of two Alaskas — in the last 25 years, says a study, “Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets,” out in Current Biology.
“Without any policies to protect these areas, they are falling victim to widespread development. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around,” said lead author Dr. James Watson, of the University of Queensland and Wildlife Conservation Society.
Most of the loss was centered in the Brazilian Amazon, which has fallen victim to massive deforestation, and central Africa, vital habitat for forest elephants and chimpanzees.
“The analysis defined wilderness as places that are ‘ecologically largely intact’ and ‘mostly free of human disturbance.’ though some have indigenous people living within them. The team counted areas as no longer wilderness if they scored on eight measures of humanity’s footprint, including roads, lights at night and agriculture,” explains The Guardian.
The authors called for saving these landscapes the same way we try to save individual species. “There are four reasons why we need to protect these places. One is biodiversity, the second is carbon, the third is the poorest of the poor are living in them, and the fourth is this is a reference point for nature, of pre-human environments,” Watson told the Guardian.
Twenty-three percent of the globe’s landmass still qualifies as wilderness, namely “the boreal forests of northern Canada, Australia’s deserts and western woodlands, some lowland forests in Asia and parts of central Africa,” says The Guardian.
The study was released as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) meets in Hawaii. Next week, says The Guardian, government leaders will convene in Johannesburg to discuss the illegal trade of products from endangered species, including elephant ivory.