Treehugger Tuesday

From Mother Nature Network:

11 Startling Stats about Earth's Disappearing Wildlife
Russell McLendon
October 30, 2018, 2:48 p.m.

Our planet has lost 60 percent of its vertebrate animals since 1970, a new report warns, but there still may be time to save the rest.

Habitat loss is the main threat to many endangered land animals like snow leopards, the WWF warns. (Photo: Tambako the Jaguar/Flickr)

Earth is most likely experiencing its sixth mass extinction. The planet has been through at least five such catastrophes before, but this is the first one in human history — and the first one with human fingerprints.

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) offers sobering details about this decline, which has already cut the planet's vertebrate wildlife populations by an average of 60 percent in just 40 years. The 2018 Living Planet Report reveals the troubling extent of this and other environmental crises around the world, but it also sheds light on the ways we can still protect and rehabilitate what's left.

"Science is showing us the harsh reality our forests, oceans and rivers are enduring at our hands," says Marco Lambertini, director of WWF International, in a statement. "Inch by inch and species by species, shrinking wildlife numbers and wild places are an indicator of the tremendous impact and pressure we are exerting on the planet, undermining the very living fabric that sustains us all: nature and biodiversity."

This is the first edition since 2016 of the Living Planet Report, which the WWF releases every two years. The full report spans 140 dense pages in a 15-megabyte PDF, and as WWF chief scientist Jon Hoekstra acknowledged in 2014, these reports "can seem very overwhelming and complex."

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