Monday, September 29, 2014

Global Loss of Species Stands at 50% in the Last Forty Years



Tiger in the wild. File photo
In Nepal, habitat loss and hunting have reduced tigers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,000

The global loss of species is even worse than previously thought, the London Zoological Society (ZSL) says in its new Living Planet Index.
The report suggests populations have halved in 40 years, as new methodology gives more alarming results than in a report two years ago. The report says populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52%.
Populations of freshwater species have suffered an even worse fall of 76%. Compiling a global average of species decline involves tricky statistics, often comparing disparate data sets.


An elephant and calf walk along the grasslands in Kenya. File photo

The Living Planet Index tracks more than 10,000 vertebrate species populations from 1970 to 2010

The team at the zoological society say they've improved their methodology since their last report two years ago - but the results are even more alarming. Then they estimated that wildlife was down "only" around 30%. Whatever the numbers, it seems clear that wildlife is continuing to be driven out by human activity.
The society's report, in conjunction with the pressure group WWF, says humans are cutting down trees more quickly than they can re-grow, harvesting more fish than the oceans can re-stock, pumping water from rivers and aquifers faster than rainfall can replenish them, and emitting more carbon than oceans and forests can absorb.
It catalogues areas of severe impact - in Ghana, the lion population in one reserve is down 90% in 40 years. In West Africa, forest felling has restricted forest elephants to 6-7% of their historic range.
In Nepal, habitat loss and hunting have reduced tigers from 100,000 a century ago to just 3,000.
In the UK, the government promised to halt wildlife decline - but bird numbers continue to fall.

The index tracks more than 10,000 vertebrate species populations from 1970 to 2010. It reveals a continued decline in these populations. The global trend is not slowing down.
The report shows that the biggest recorded threat to biodiversity comes from the combined impacts of habitat loss and degradation, driven by what WWF calls unsustainable human consumption.
The report notes that the impacts of climate change are becoming of increasing concern - although the effect of climate change on species until now has been disputed in certain quarters. But environmental scientists do not lie and neither does their research. Time to wake up and smell the mass extinction coffee, folks.

The World Wildlife Federation points to conservation efforts to save species such as:

  • The Gorilla Conservation Program in Rwanda, promoting gorilla tourism
  • The scheme to give small-scale farmers incentive to move away from slash and burn agriculture in Acre, Brazil.
Other countries have implemented programs to preserve native species, but so far, they are too few and far between to have impact on the losses.

Previously, the Living Planet Index was calculated using the average decline in all of the species populations measured. The new weighted methodology analyzes the data to provide what ZSL says is a much more accurate calculation of the collective status of populations in all species and regions.
A ZSL spokesman explained: "For example, if most measurements in a particular region are of bird populations, but the greatest actual number of vertebrates in the region are fish, then it is necessary to give a greater weight to measurements of fish populations if we are to have an accurate picture of the rate of population decline for species in that region.
"Different weights are applied to different regions, and between marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments. We are simply being more sophisticated with the way we use the data."
"Applying the new method to the 2008 dataset we find that things were considerably worse than what we thought at that time. It is clear that we are seeing a significant long-term trend in declining species populations."
Consider the food chain of our planet and see it as a totem pole with us at the top. All the species below us, and which support us, are declining at a frightening rate. As each one becomes extinct we drop a level. And when we reach the bottom of the pole, we too, disappear.

1 comment:

  1. Howdy PIC ,
    Check your mail ... Maxy was ready today at 1PM schedule for Thursday morning 12:01AM .
    Luv PIC

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