Major extinction happening now
"For the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we face a global mass extinction of wildlife. You can see it happening all around." Mike Barrett, director of science and policy at WWF-UK
BRITAIN: The world is facing the biggest extinction since the dinosaurs, with seven in 10 mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles wiped out in just 50 years, a new report warns.
The latest Living Planet Report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) estimates that by 2020 populations of vertebrates will have fallen by 67 per cent since 1970.
Extinction rates are now running at one hundred times their natural level because of deforestation, hunting, pollution, overfishing and climate change.
The largest ever analysis of 14,152 populations of 3706 species of vertebrates showed a 58 per cent fall in animals -between 1970 and 2012 - with no sign that the average need to act now to make the world more sustainable.
‘‘We have an intergenerational responsibility.
‘‘But we can stop this. While on the one hand we’re the first species to change the planet, we’ve also never had a better understanding of how environmental systems work and how forests, oceans and climate all interact.
‘‘It’s a matter of will. I hope this report is sufficiently worrying to spur people and governments into the action that is needed.’’
Report authors looked forward to the date of 2020 because that was the target date set by the United Nations to halt biodiversity loss.
But the researchers say the target will almost certainly not be met and argue that the world is facing its sixth mass extinction in its history, where 90 per cent of animals could be lost.
Populations that have been impacted by human activity include African elephants in Tanzania, which have seen numbers crash due to poaching, maned wolves in Brazil, which are threatened by grasslands being turned into farmland and European eels have declined due to disease, over-fishing and changes to their river habitats.
Wildlife is also being hit by climate change, pollution, and overexploitation of natural resources, the report warned. By 2012, the equivalent of 1.6 Earths was needed to provide what humanity consumes each year. Marco Lambertini of WWF said: ‘‘We are entering a new era in Earth’s history’’. - Telegraph Group