Defaunation

The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report 2022 found that wildlife populations declined by an average 69% since 1970.[1][2][3]

Defaunation is the global, local, or functional extinction of animal populations or species from ecological communities.[4] The growth of the human population, combined with advances in harvesting technologies, has led to more intense and efficient exploitation of the environment.[5] This has resulted in the depletion of large vertebrates from ecological communities, creating what has been termed "empty forest".[6][5][7] Defaunation differs from extinction; it includes both the disappearance of species and declines in abundance.[8] Defaunation effects were first implied at the Symposium of Plant-Animal Interactions at the University of Campinas, Brazil in 1988 in the context of Neotropical forests.[9] Since then, the term has gained broader usage in conservation biology as a global phenomenon.[4][9]

It is estimated that more than 50 percent of all wildlife has been lost in the last 40 years.[10] In 2016, it was estimated that by 2020, 68% of the world's wildlife would be lost.[11] In South America, there is believed to be a 70 percent loss.[12] A 2021 study found that only around 3% of the planet's terrestrial surface is ecologically and faunally intact, with healthy populations of native animal species and little to no human footprint.[13][14]

In November 2017, over 15,000 scientists around the world issued a second warning to humanity, which, among other things, urged for the development and implementation of policies to halt "defaunation, the poaching crisis, and the exploitation and trade of threatened species."[15]

  1. ^ "Living Planet Index, World". Our World in Data. 13 October 2022. Archived from the original on 8 October 2023. Data source: World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Zoological Society of London
  2. ^ Whiting, Kate (17 October 2022). "6 charts that show the state of biodiversity and nature loss - and how we can go 'nature positive'". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on 25 September 2023.
  3. ^ Regional data from "How does the Living Planet Index vary by region?". Our World in Data. 13 October 2022. Archived from the original on 20 September 2023. Data source: Living Planet Report (2022). World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Zoological Society of London. -
  4. ^ a b Dirzo R, Young HS, Galetti M, Ceballos G, Isaac NJ, Collen B (2014). "Defaunation in the Anthropocene" (PDF). Science. 345 (6195): 401–406. Bibcode:2014Sci...345..401D. doi:10.1126/science.1251817. PMID 25061202. S2CID 206555761.
  5. ^ a b Primack, Richard (2014). Essentials of Conservation Biology. Sunderland, MA USA: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers. pp. 217–245. ISBN 9781605352893.
  6. ^ Harrison R, Sreekar R, et al. (September 2016). "Impacts of hunting on tropical forests in Southeast Asia". Conservation Biology. 30 (5): 972–981. doi:10.1111/cobi.12785. PMID 27341537. S2CID 3793259.
  7. ^ Vignieri, Sacha (2014). "Vanishing fauna". Science. 345 (6195): 392–395. Bibcode:2014Sci...345..392V. doi:10.1126/science.345.6195.392. PMID 25061199.
  8. ^ "Tracking and combatting our current mass extinction". Ars Technica. 25 July 2014. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
  9. ^ a b Dirzo, R. and Galetti, M. "Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Living in a Defaunated World.[dead link‍]" Biological Conservation 163 (2013): 1-6.
  10. ^ Naik, Gautam (30 September 2014). "Wildlife Numbers Drop by Half Since 1970, Report Says". Wall Street Journal.
  11. ^ Carrington, Damian (2016-10-26). "World on track to lose two-thirds of wild animals by 2020, major report warns". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-04-12.
  12. ^ Ceballos, G.; Ehrlich, A. H.; Ehrlich, P. R. (2015). The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 135 ISBN 1421417189 – via Open Edition.
  13. ^ Carrington, Damian (April 15, 2021). "Just 3% of world's ecosystems remain intact, study suggests". The Guardian. Retrieved April 18, 2021.
  14. ^ Plumptre, Andrew J.; Baisero, Daniele; et al. (2021). "Where Might We Find Ecologically Intact Communities?". Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. 4. doi:10.3389/ffgc.2021.626635. hdl:10261/242175.
  15. ^ Ripple WJ, Wolf C, Newsome TM, Galetti M, Alamgir M, Crist E, Mahmoud MI, Laurance WF (13 November 2017). "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice". BioScience. 35 (12): 1026–1028. doi:10.1093/biosci/bix125. hdl:11336/71342.