Earth’s wildlife population 'falls by 60% in 44 years': Report

Switzerland, Oct 30: A startling report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has shown that Earth's wildlife population declined by nearly two-thirds in just over four decades.

From 1970 to 2014, 60 percent 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.

Human activity, including habitat loss, wildlife trade, pollution and climate change contributed to the declines.

But over the past 50 years expanding agricultural activity and the over-exploitation of natural resources to feed a growing world population, particularly its booming middle class, has pushed many ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

The decline is yet another sign that people have become the driving force for change on Earth, ushering in the epoch of the Anthropocene, a term derived from "anthropos", the Greek for "human" and "-cene" denoting a geological period.

Conservation efforts appear to be having scant impact as the index is showing a steeper plunge in wildlife populations than two years ago, when the WWF estimated a 52 percent decline by 2010.

"Wildlife is disappearing within our lifetimes at an unprecedented rate," Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International, said in a statement of the group's Living Planet Report, published every two years.

80% of freshwater populations has vanished

More than 80 per cent of freshwater populations has vanished, with freshwater fish accounting for a higher rate of extinction than any other vertebrate. Since 1950 nearly 6bn tonnes of fish and other seafood have been removed from the world's oceans.

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.

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.

Global warming

The Paris Agreement, negotiated under the UN convention on climate change, also set a clear target: global warming must be held to "well below" 2C, and 1.5C 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 told AFP. 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."