The weight of vertebrate land animals on Earth tells a story that most environmental discussions skip over. Ten thousand years ago, wild animals made up 99 percent of that combined biomass and humans accounted for 1 percent. Today, wild animals represent just 1 percent, humans account for 32 percent, and livestock make up the remaining 67 percent.
A Transformation Driven by Population Growth
Colcom Foundation uses this data point to illustrate the scope of what it describes as a wildlife collapse driven by human population pressure. Colcom Foundation analysis covers half a century of parallel trends: wild vertebrate populations globally have halved over the same period that the human population doubled. Wild animal populations in 1970 were roughly equal in number to the human population. By 2017, humans outnumbered wild animals by a substantial margin.
North American birds have seen losses of 2.9 billion individuals since 1970, a decline from ten billion to seven billion. IUCN data cited by the foundation shows that high percentages of both threatened and near-threatened species are experiencing declining populations. The Endangered Species Act listed 1,300 species as endangered or threatened by 2020. Twenty-three species were proposed for delisting in 2021 not because they recovered but because they went extinct.
Habitat Under Permanent Pressure
The mechanism Colcom Foundation identifies is straightforward growing human populations require more land for housing, agriculture, and infrastructure, leaving less for everything else. By 2020, the U.S. had paved or developed an area the size of Montana, West Virginia, and South Carolina combined. Fifty-two percent of U.S. land was tied up in agricultural use, with only 13 percent under any conservation protection.
The foundation argues that conservation funding, habitat restoration, and species protection programs are all constrained by the same underlying variable. Colcom Foundation continues to make the case that wildlife recovery at any meaningful scale requires confronting the population pressures that drive habitat loss in the first place. Refer to this article for related information.
Find more information about Colcom Foundation on http://conservativetransparency.org/donor/colcom-foundation/