Global wildlife populations declined by two-thirds since 1970

Global animal populations have on average declined by two-thirds in less than half a century, according to the WWF's Living Planet Report 2020 involving UCL researchers, released today. The Living Planet Index (LPI), provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), shows that factors believed to increase the planet's vulnerability to pandemics such as COVID-19 - including land-use change and the use and trade of wildlife - were also some of the drivers behind the 68% average decline in global mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish populations between 1970 and 2016. The report presents a comprehensive overview of the state of the natural world through the LPI, which tracks trends in global wildlife abundance, and contributions from more than 125 experts from around the world. It shows that the main cause of the dramatic decline in species populations on land observed in the LPI is habitat loss and degradation, including deforestation, driven by how we as humanity produce food. Endangered species captured in the LPI include the eastern lowland gorilla, whose numbers in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo have seen an estimated 87% decline between 1994 and 2015 mostly due to illegal hunting, and the African grey parrot in southwest Ghana, whose numbers fell by up to 99% between 1992 and 2014 due to threats posed by trapping for the wild bird trade and habitat loss. The LPI, which tracked almost 21,000 populations of more than 4,000 vertebrate species between 1970 and 2016, also shows that wildlife populations found in freshwater habitats have suffered a decline of 84% - the starkest average population decline in any biome, equivalent to 4% per year since 1970.