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“Circle of Death” by Srikanth Mannepuri, Winner, Conservation Issues, Nature inFocus Photography Awards
 

A major report by conservation group WWF, Living Planet Report 2020 (PDF), says that global wildlife populations have plummeted by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years—and humans are destroying nature at an unprecedented rate. “We are wrecking our world—the one place we call home—risking our health, security and survival here on Earth,” says chief executive at WWF, Tanya Steele. “Now nature is sending us a desperate SOS and time is running out.”

The report, which is based on data from the Living Planet Index produced by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), considered well over 4,000 species monitored by conservation scientists in habitats across the world, concluding that more than 20,000 populations of vertebrates have fallen by 68% on average since 1970. “If nothing changes populations will undoubtedly continue to fall, driving wildlife to extinction and threatening the integrity of the ecosystems on which we all depend,” says Dr Andrew Terry, ZSL’s Director of Conservation. “But we also know that conservation works and species can be brought back from the brink. With commitment, investment and expertise, these trends can be reversed.”

In 2019, an intergovernmental panel of scientists warned that humans threaten one million species—half a million animals and plants, and half a million insects—with extinction.

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