Original article from: Smithsonian Magazine
Two major reports released this month paint a grim portrait of the future for our planet’s wildlife. First, the Living Planet Report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), published last week, found that in half a century, human activity has decimated global wildlife populations by an average of 68 percent.
The study analyzed population sizes of 4,392 monitored species of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians from 1970 to 2016, reports Karin Brulliard for the Washington Post. It found that populations in Latin America and the Caribbean fared the worst, with a staggering 94 percent decline in population. All told, the drastic species decline tracked in this study “signal a fundamentally broken relationship between humans and the natural world,” the WWF notes in a release.
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Biomass: The total mass of every living organism. The mass of all plants, insects, reptiles, and mammals are calculated and represented as biomass.
Biodiversity: The measure of the variety of life. Biodiversity represents how many different kinds of species exist on Earth.
What’s so scary about climate change? Won’t life adapt?
Life will adapt to climate change but not fast enough. It will devastate life in the process because of the rate that climate is changing exceeds most species’ ability to adapt. Millions of species will go extinct, and food chains will collapse in the process.
As global warming increases, one of the most significant habitats that will be affected will be coral reefs. The Netflix documentary “Chasing Coral” does a wonderful job of conveying the seriousness of this issue. At present, the full documentary is available for free on Youtube.