press release<\/a> on the matter provides details about how the new study was conducted: “The researchers mapped the ranges of 27,600 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles — a sample representing nearly half of known terrestrial vertebrate species — and analyzed population losses in a sample of 177 well-studied mammal species between 1990 and 2015.<\/p>\n“Using range reduction as a proxy for population loss, the study finds more than 30% of vertebrate species are declining in population size and range. Of the 177 mammals for which the researchers had detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% have lost more than 80% of their ranges. Tropical regions have had the greatest number of decreasing species while temperate regions have seen similar or higher proportions of decreasing species. Particularly hard hit have been the mammals of south and southeast Asia, where all the large-bodied species of mammals analyzed have lost more than 80% of their geographic ranges.<\/p>\n
“The study’s maps suggest that as much as 50% of the number of animal individuals that once shared Earth have disappeared, as have billions of animal populations. This amounts to ‘a massive erosion of the greatest biological diversity in the history of Earth,’ the authors write.”<\/p>\n
The impacts of this biological loss will greatly and increasingly affect everything from crop pollination, to pest control (insect and rodent population booms as the result of a loss of predators), to water purification via wetlands, to food\/protein availability, etc.<\/p>\n
So, in other words, even those that have lost the ability to maintain a sense of responsibility for the wider world, or the ability to sympathize with the parts of it that aren’t human for that matter, will be affected. Everyone from the tree huggers to the ranchers to the cubicle fauna will be affected, and to an every increasing degree, as the biological world continues to be diminished year by year. There will be no way to avoid this reality.<\/p>\n
The researchers note that if this ongoing and very dangerous disaster is to be contained to any real degree that the basic drivers behind it will need to be addressed — meaning that human overpopulation and overconsumption will need to be addressed.<\/p>\n
First, of course, these basic drivers of most of the world’s problems will need to be discussed politically, which is something that rarely ever happens, as the subjects are seemingly something of a taboo.<\/p>\n
Image credit: Gerardo Ceballos<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of individual animals in the world — amongst birds, amphibians, mammals, and reptiles, etc. — has been reduced by as much as 50% over the last few decades, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found. 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