“Worldwide populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have plunged by almost 60 percent since 1970 as human activities overwhelm the environment,” says Reuters, based on the 2016 Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
Worldwide conservation efforts appear to be having little impact, says Reuters, with the 58-percent decline in wildlife driven largely by clearing land for agriculture and urban development. Pollution, invasive species, hunting and climate change also are factors.
“Wildlife is disappearing within our lifetimes at an unprecedented rate,” Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said in a statement.
Some scientists disagree with the idea of trying to quantify species loss in one number. “I think the trouble with that number [58 percent], like any single number, is it’s meaningless,” Stuart Pimm, who a professor of species extinction and global patterns of habitat loss at Duke University, told NPR.
“It’s certainly true that wildlife is declining, and in some places it’s declining precipitously,” he says. “But to try to come up with a single number that summarizes all the things that are going on in the oceans, in North America and Europe, Africa, South America … into a single number doesn’t really tell you anything.”
On the positive side, certain species, like the Eurasian lynx, are rebounding strongly, says NPR. And a recent agreement by 200 countries to curb emissions could go far in protecting rainforests, and preventing both desertification and ocean acidification, says Reuters. Some species, like the Giant Panda, in China, have also seen a comeback in recent years. More important, the report marks declines in population, not extinctions, meaning there is still time to protect threatened species.