THE world鈥檚 wild vertebrate species have seen populations crash by 60 per cent on average since 1970, according to conservation group WWF.
The charity鈥檚 Living Planet Report says that the driving force behind the decline is rising human consumption of resources. While climate change is a growing problem, the biggest threats to animals, as well as plants, are their overexploitation and loss of habitat to agriculture, which together account for 75 per cent of extinctions since 1500. Only a quarter of Earth鈥檚 land is essentially free of the impacts of human activities, and this area is projected to shrink to a tenth by 2050.
The report urges world leaders to make 鈥渢he most ambitious global agreement yet鈥� to tackle the decline in wildlife when they meet at the UN Biodiversity Conference in November. 鈥淲e have an opportunity to design a new path forward that allows us to co-exist sustainably with the wildlife we depend upon,鈥� says Ken Norris of the Zoological Society of London, which contributed to the report.
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢assive drop in animal numbers鈥�
