The abundance of vertebrate populations has fallen by an average of 69% over the past fifty years, according to a report published Thursday by the WWF.
There are fewer and fewer wild animals on Earth. The size of the populations of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds and amphibians fell by an average of 69% between 1970 and 2018, according to the Living Planet report released by the WWF on Thursday October 13. This catastrophic rate does not provide information on the number of extinct species, but on the decrease in the number of wild vertebrates monitored by scientists around the world.
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“It’s a different way to monitor the health of biodiversity than Red Lists of Threatened Species, underlines Arnaud Gauffier, director of programs at the WWF. Our indicator provides an alarm signal because high mortality in an animal population is often the harbinger of the extinction of the species concerned. In ten years, Living Planet Index lost another 10 points: the phenomenon is not slowing down”.
The association, which has published this report every two years for fifty years, has worked with the Zoological Society of London
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