Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970s, WWF report says
Nature has been pushed to the brink by ‘runaway consumption’, according to the conservation group
Paris — Unbridled consumption has decimated global wildlife, triggered a mass extinction and exhausted Earth’s capacity to accommodate humanity’s expanding appetites, the conservation group WWF warned on Tuesday. From 1970 to 2014, 60% 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. “The situation is really bad, and it keeps getting worse,” WWF International director general Marco Lambertini said. “The only good news is that we know exactly what is happening.” For freshwater fauna, the decline in population over the 44 years monitored was a staggering 80%. Latin America was hit hardest, seeing a nearly 90% loss of wildlife over the same period. Another data set confirmed the depth of an unfolding mass extinction event, only the sixth in the past half-billion years. ...
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