THE BIGGER PICTURE IS EVEN WORSE. One million plant and animal species are now threatened with extinction due to human activities.1
EXCERPTED FROM The Great Healing:
The United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report, a three-year assessment prepared by 150 experts from 50 countries released May 6, 2019, confirms that species are dying off at a rate “tens to hundreds times higher than the average across the past ten million years.”2 A 2017 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., Biological Annihilation Via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines, concludes that “Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This ‘biological annihilation’ underlies the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.”3
The Living Planet Report 2018 from the World Wildlife Fund reveals “an astonishing 60% decline in the size of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians in just over 40 years.”4 Invertebrate populations, such as bees and beetles, have decreased 45% in 35 years.5 7% of the planet’s invertebrate species have now been lost6 and a January 2019 study determined that the world’s total mass of insects is decreasing 2.5% a year.7
In 2018, 40% of the world’s bird species are in decline with 1,469 species (1 in 8) facing extinction.8
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1 Matt McGrath, Nature Crisis: Humans ‘Threaten 1m Species with Extinction,’ BBC News, May 6, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48169783
2 Jeff Tollefson, Humans Are Driving One Million Species to Extinction, Nature, May 6, 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4
3 World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report 2018, https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/living-planet-report-2018
4 Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Rodolfo Dirzo, Biological Annihilation Via the Ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction Signaled by Vertebrate Population Losses and Declines, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. Vol. 114 No. 30 E6089-E6096 May 23, 2017 http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089.abstract
5 Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S. Young, Mauro Galetti, et al. Defaunation in the Anthropocene, Sciencemag.org, Jul. 25, 2014, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/401/tab-figures-data
6 Claire Regnier et all, Mass Extinction in Poorly Known Taxa, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. Vol. 112 No. 25 7761-7766 May 5, 2015 http://www.pnas.org/content/112/25/7761.abstract
7 Francisco Sánchez-Bayo, Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, Worldwide Decline of the Entomofauna: A Review of its Drivers, Science Direct, Jan. 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020
8 State of the World’s Birds, BirdLife International 2018 Report, https://www.birdlife.org/sites/default/files/attachments/BL_ReportENG_V11_spreads.pdf