World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns
wonderful video .. thanks, F6, and echo your thanks to Homebrew!..
Living Planet Index shows vertebrate populations are set to decline by 67% on 1970 levels unless urgent action is taken to reduce humanity’s impact
A victim of poachers in Kenya: elephants are among the species most impacted by humans, the WWF report found. Photograph: imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock
Damian Carrington @dpcarrington
Thursday 27 October 2016 10.53 AEDT Last modified on Saturday 29 October 2016 00.17 AEDT
The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report .. http://www.livingplanetindex.org/home/index , part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.
The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.
The creatures being lost range from mountains to forests to rivers and the seas and include well-known endangered species such as elephants and gorillas and lesser known creatures such as vultures and salamanders.
The collapse of wildlife is, with climate change, the most striking sign of the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological era .. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth .. in which humans dominate the planet. “We are no longer a small world on a big planet. We are now a big world on a small planet, where we have reached a saturation point,” said Prof Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, in a foreword for the report.
Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF, said: “The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself and we are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse.”
He said humanity was completely dependent on nature for clean air and water, food and materials, as well as inspiration and happiness.
The report analysed the changing abundance of more than 14,000 monitored populations of the 3,700 vertebrate species for which good data is available. This produced a measure akin to a stock market index that indicates the state of the world’s 64,000 animal species and is used by scientists .. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6206/241.full .. to measure the progress of conservation efforts.
The biggest cause of tumbling animal numbers is the destruction of wild areas for farming and logging: the majority of the Earth’s land area has now been impacted by humans, with just 15% protected for nature. Poaching and exploitation for food is another major factor, due to unsustainable fishing and hunting: more than 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction .. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/19/worlds-mammals-being-eaten-into-extinction-report-warns , according to recent research.
Rivers and lakes are the hardest hit habitats, with animals populations down by 81% since 1970, due to excessive water extraction, pollution and dams. All the pressures are magnified by global warming, which shifts the ranges in which animals are able to live, said WWF’s director of science, Mike Barrett.
Some researchers have reservations about the report’s approach, which summarises many different studies into a headline number. “It is broadly right, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts,” said Prof Stuart Pimm, at Duke University in the US, adding that looking at particular groups, such as birds, is more precise.
The report warns that losses of wildlife will impact on people and could even provoke conflicts: “Increased human pressure threatens the natural resources that humanity depends upon, increasing the risk of water and food insecurity and competition over natural resources.”
But stemming the overall losses of animals and habitats requires systemic change in how society consumes resources, said Barrett. People can choose to eat less meat, which is often fed on grain grown on deforested land, and businesses should ensure their supply chains, such as for timber, are sustainable, he said.
“You’d like to think that was a no-brainer in that if a business is consuming the raw materials for its products in a way that is not sustainable, then inevitably it will eventually put itself out of business,” Barrett said. Politicians must also ensure all their policies - not just environmental ones - are sustainable, he added.
“The report is certainly a pretty shocking snapshot of where we are,” said Barrett. “My hope though is that we don’t throw our hands up in despair - there is no time for despair, we have to crack on and act. I do remain convinced we can find our sustainable course through the Anthropocene, but the will has to be there to do it.”
Data app pushes Chinese factories to cut pollution
by Laurie Goering | @lauriegoering | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 17 April 2015 14:33 GMT
IMAGE: .. young girl on a balcony reading .. in background human created pollution .. forlorn yet hopeful .. sorry i can't reproduce it here ..
Mobile phone app lets users check if a factory or power plant near their home is violating pollution standards
By Laurie Goering
OXFORD, England, April 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When environmentalist Ma Jun set out to tackle pollution from Chinese industries, it seemed a near-impossible task.
Taking polluting factories to court was difficult. Factory owners were powerful, and the incentives were stronger to cut environmental corners than comply with regulations.
But China's government, worried about public anger over worsening pollution, had begun collecting real-time emissions data from factories and when Ma asked for water pollution data be made public, officials agreed, giving him fodder for an app.
"I was very surprised when the government said yes," he said at the Skoll World Forum on Entrepreneurship, where he was awarded a $1.25 million prize.
Indonesia forest fires: has this Sumatran village got the solution?
The small village of Dosan has not recorded a single fire since 2012, despite being surrounded by palm oil plantations
Farmer Pak Dahlan walks through an oil palm plantation in Dosan, Sumatra. The village has made a concerted effort to tackle the forest fires which ravage the region every year. Photograph: Laura Villadiego
Laura Villadiego in Riau, Indonesia Wednesday 14 September 2016 17.43 AEST Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 2016 02.51 AEST
Fires have returned once again to the forests and peatlands of Riau province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The annual environmental disaster devastates millions of hectares (pdf) in the archipelago and has been linked to the clearing of forest and peatland for oil palm and paper pulp plantations.
Pictured: Haunting face crying a river of tears as glacier melts into the sea 03rd September 2009 Tears of Mother Nature: The image of a crying face looming from an icy cliff wall was taken at the Svalbard archipelago in Norway http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=41221897
Piers Sellers, shuttle astronaut and renowned climate researcher, dies at 61 Piers Sellers flew on three assembly missions to the International Space Station. He is seen here on the STS-132 mission in May 2010. Piers Sellers was most recently deputy director of the sciences and exploration directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Sellers on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on the STS-121 mission in July 2006. December 26, 2016 http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/12/26/piers-sellers-shuttle-astronaut-and-renowned-climate-researcher-dies-at-61/ [with comments]
Donald Trump and the Triumph of Climate-Change Denial A presidential administration hostile to climate science also threatens to deepen the skepticism that already exists in American political life. The science of man-made global warming has only grown more conclusive. So why have Republicans become less convinced it’s real over the past decade and a half? Dec 25, 2016 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/12/donald-trump-climate-change-skeptic-denial/510359/ [with comments]
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