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posted by mrpg on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-fed-up-with-humans dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.

Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.

The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.

"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."

"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:55PM (2 children)

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:55PM (#756061) Journal

    To suggest as TFA does that, " Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover" seems flatly ridiculous to me. Not the first half, which I'm not sure of. The second half... Life grows far too explosively for it to take 5-7 *million* years to recover. Getting diversity may be a problem and what they're getting at, although there is no signal that diversity is required for life to thrive.

    How much of that 83% were animals grown specifically for food? If it's none, fine. But "all mammals" would seem to have to include those that have been intentionally farmed also, no?

    TFA also gives exactly one sentence detailing disagreement with the report. "The Living Planet Index has been criticised as being too broad a measure of wildlife losses and smoothing over crucial details." I'd like to know who's criticizing it and why. So here are a couple of links I found by Googling:

    https://researchtheheadlines.org/2016/11/07/delving-into-the-living-planet-index-a-single-metric-for-a-complex-problem/ [researchtheheadlines.org]
    https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/living-planet-index-world-lose-two-thirds-animals-2020-conservation-science/ [nationalgeographic.com]

    Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:37AM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:37AM (#756300)

    it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover" seems flatly ridiculous to me. Not the first half, which I'm not sure of. The second half... Life grows far too explosively for it to take 5-7 *million* years to recover. Getting diversity may be a problem and what they're getting at, although there is no signal that diversity is required for life to thrive.

    Phytoplankton in the polar seas goes through annual collapse and bloom, it "recovers" every year with the return of the sun. It's also boring slime. Whales find it tasty, but not much fun to talk to.

    If we want to live like whales, alternating between a sterile desert meet market for breeding and a micro-organism broth for feeding, then, sure, no diversity required.

    Some of my favored "natural places" in ascending order of preference would be:

    1) a row crop like a corn field, preferably non-monoculture and minimal or zero dependence on chemicals (in other words, non-existent in commercially competitive farms...)

    2) a row crop like a tree farm, preferably one with a thriving integrated understory ecosystem, bands of non-farmed trees, bottomlands, etc. Again, far from the bankers' idea of an optimal tree farm, and fairly rare when looking at the bulk of tree farm lands in the southeast US.

    3) a natural space, like we used to own 20 acres of until recently, basically fallow land along a riverbank, not "harvested" for 100+ years, includes a wide variety of all kinds of wild species - a much more satisfying place to spend time than either of the above which tend to be rather sterile.

    4) old growth rainforest - for more details watch any one of a thousand video documentaries

    5) coral reefs - pre-bleaching, for a sad perspective on how far down the slippery slope we are, see: Chasing Coral on Netflix or the web

    Do we need 3, 4, and 5 to "feed the world?" The banks don't think so. When the monocultures predominantly used in 1 and 2 are destroyed by blight, then we need 3, 4 and 5 to provide the replacements that aren't vulnerable to the blight. This has been demonstrated over and over throughout recent history.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:51AM (#756305)

      > 3) a natural space, like we used to own 20 acres of until recently, basically fallow land along a riverbank, not "harvested" for 100+ years,

      Sorry to hear you lost your wilderness property. I've still got the 110 acres that I mostly inherited (I helped buy the last of three parcels around 1980). The top third is marginal farmland in the NE USA, can't get any of the local farmers to take the hay for free. Rest is as you describe, along a small but beautiful creek. A stretch of walking trail has an easement to use one edge that we rarely get to. Since I have no direct heirs, my will specifies that the whole property goes to the trail association. In the meantime I pay the taxes, which aren't too bad, in exchange for having a relatively unspoiled place to go.