Humans Are Close To Killing Off Two-Thirds Of All Wildlife

A damning new report from the World Wildlife Fund has found a precipitous decline in the world’s animal populations as thousands of species scramble to survive against a sole enemy: humans.

The 2016 version of WWF’s biennial Living Planet Report, published Thursday, found a 58 percent overall decline in vertebrate populations from 1970 to 2012, the latest year with available data. The nonprofit warned that if current trends continue, the world could lose more than two-thirds of wildlife by 2020.

“As humanity continues to demand more and more of the earth and puts pressures on our natural capital, what we’re seeing is the fraying of wildlife,” said Colby Loucks, senior director for the WWF’s Wildlife Conservation Program.

Humans have affected the entire spectrum of vertebrate life ― fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, the report says. The document’s warning of vanishing wildlife refers to total population size, not the number of species that will go extinct. That’s an entirely different problem.

Loucks linked wildlife losses to what he called the “five horseman” of the environmental apocalypse: habitat loss, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species and climate change. Those factors have undercut the 3,706 species documented by the WWF on land and in ocean and freshwater habitats.

Full Story at Huffington Post