“The message is clear and the lights are flashing red”, WWF International Director-General Marco Lambertini said in his foreword to the 115-page report, adding it presented some “terrifying figures”.
The landmark report, released on Thursday by WWF in collaboration with the Zoological Society London, shows the relative abundance – the rate at which species’ population sizes are changing – of wildlife populations fell on average by 69 percent between 1970 and 2018. The findings were based on data from ZSL featuring almost 32,000 wildlife populations of 5,230 species from across the world.
The index showed wildlife – including the Amazon pink river dolphin, or boto, and oceanic shark and ray populations – suffering particularly steep declines in the past 50 years. But it also showed conservation efforts had helped boost species such as loggerhead turtles in Cyprus and mountain gorillas in the Virunga Mountains along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
One very important and valid takeaway point is that we should begin to recognize and respect the rights, governance and conservation leadership of Indigenous people and local communities around the world because they are key to taking care of our living planet. They can assist to protect endangered flora and fauna.
But we should equally accept that extinction is a natural phenomenon: After all, more than 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth aren't alive today.
Sure, we humans have made it worse, accelerating natural extinction rates due to our role in habitat loss, climate change, invasive species, disease, overfishing, and hunting.
Indeed, we can’t run away from the fact that the pressures we are placing on the natural world is driving an escalating nature crisis which, in turn, is undermining its ability to provide crucial services, including climate change mitigation and adaptation. Our destruction of nature is also increasing our vulnerability to pandemics, while placing the most vulnerable at the greatest risk.
Yet, no matter how much care and caution we accord, human activities will still yield negative impacts on biodiversity. But if we can acknowledge and recognize the integrated nature of our environmental challenges, I am confident we can still find win-win solutions.
Therefore, protecting our flora and fauna means protecting us as well – and not to mention that future generations can enjoy our natural world and the incredible species that live within it.
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