According to a new report, the world will see a mass extinction of the natural world’s wildlife by 2020.

Already, every year, every day, scientists report that a mammal / insect / reptile has become extinct. The Guardian reporting on the damning news:

The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020.

Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

The report analysed the changing abundance of more than 14 000 monitored populations of the 3 700 vertebrate species for which good data is available. This produced a measure akin to a stock market index that indicates the state of the world’s 64 000 animal species and is used by scientists to measure the progress of conservation efforts.

This comes after scientists announced the human-dominated ecological era, Anthropocene, has come into age a while back. Prof Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, wrote a foreword for the report and stated:

We are no longer a small world on a big planet. We are now a big world on a small planet, where we have reached a saturation point.

And guess what: pollution is also a significant problem. OBVIOUSLY. Here’s how we know:

Killer whales and dolphins in European seas being seriously harmed by long-lived industrial pollutants.

Vultures in south-east Asia have been decimated over the last 20 years, dying after eating the carcasses of cattle dosed with an anti-inflammatory drug.

Amphibians have suffered one of the greatest declines of all animals due to a fungal disease thought to be spread around the world by the trade in frogs and newts.

Rivers and lakes are the hardest hit habitats, with animals populations down by 81% since 1970, due to excessive water extraction, pollution and dams.

And that’s why people need to seriously change up their lifestyle and stop falling for pathetic ploys, like THIS. Still horrific, btw.

So what can you do?

People can choose to eat less meat, which is often fed on grain grown on deforested land, and businesses should ensure their supply chains, such as for timber, are sustainable, he said.

“You’d like to think that was a no-brainer in that if a business is consuming the raw materials for its products in a way that is not sustainable, then inevitably it will eventually put itself out of business,” Barrett said. Politicians must also ensure all their policies – not just environmental ones – are sustainable, he added.

And it’s really not too late to make it better – and there’s seriously no excuse not to.

[source:theguardian]