The Message is Clear and the Lights are Flashing Red

The only real surprise in a new report on wildlife populations, compiled by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, is that climate change is not the main villain (yet).

After analyzing years of data on thousands of wildlife populations across the world, the authors of “Living Planet Report 2022” find that animal populations declined by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018.

That’s bad. The report cites habitat loss, driven by land-use changes and human encroachment, as the main cause of biodiversity loss. Climate change is a big problem too, but won’t become the problem if we can pump the brakes on greenhouse gasses soon. (Spoiler alert: we won’t do that.)

The report, which calculated the average change in the "relative abundance" of 31,821 wildlife populations representing 5,230 species, found that not all regions were hit equally hard. While Latin America and the Caribbean saw a horrifying 94% average population loss, North America experienced “only” a 20% drop. Europe and central Asia saw its wildlife numbers down 18%; Africa 66%; and Asia-Pacific 55%.

“The message is clear and the lights are flashing red,” WWF International Director General Marco Lambertini said in the report’s forward. “This is the last chance we will get. By the end of this decade we will know whether this plan was enough or not; the fight for people and nature will have been won or lost.”

There is much talk but little action. “Discussions so far are locked in old-world thinking and entrenched positions,” Lambertini said, “with no sign of the bold action needed to achieve a nature-positive future.”

Things are looking grim, for wildlife and for us.

Photo credit: Paul Robinson / World Wildlife Fund