https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/climate/living-planet-index-wildlife-declines.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20221013&instance_id=74485&nl=the-morning®i_id=88360439&segment_id=109820&te=1&user_id=9c8dc2c8433f0f210392a1c0c9831ed8
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Researchers Report a Staggering Decline in Wildlife. Here’s How to Understand
It.
The latest update to an important assessment found that populations had
declined by an average of 69 percent since 1970. But that might not mean what
you think.
Oct. 12, 2022
A conservation biologist in Mérida State, Venezuela, in April. Wednesday’s
report looks at how specific populations are changing over time, not overall
losses.Miguel Zambrano/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
It’s clear that wildlife is suffering mightily on our planet, but scientists
don’t know exactly how much. A comprehensive figure is exceedingly hard to
determine. Counting wild animals — on land and at sea, from gnats to whales —
is no small feat. Most countries lack national monitoring systems.
One of the most ambitious efforts to fill this void is published every two
years. Known as the Living Planet Index
<https://livingplanetindex.org/home/index>, it’s a collaboration between two
major conservation organizations, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the
Zoological Society of London. But the report has repeatedly resulted in
inaccurate headlines when journalists misinterpreted or overstated its
results.
The assessment’s latest number, issued Wednesday by 89 authors from around
the world, is its most alarming yet: From 1970 to 2018, monitored populations
of vertebrates declined an average of 69 percent. That’s more than two-thirds
in only 48 years. It’s a staggering figure with serious implications,
especially as nations prepare to meet in Montreal this December in an effort
to agree on a new global plan to protect biodiversity. But does it mean what
you think?
What the data does, and doesn’t, mean
Remember that this number is only about vertebrates: mammals, birds,
reptiles, amphibians and fish. Absent are creatures without spines, even
though they make up the vast majority of animal species (scientists have even
less data on them).
So, have wild vertebrates plummeted by 69 percent since 1970?
No.
The study tracks selected populations of 5,320 species, vacuuming up all the
relevant published research that exists, adding more each year as new data
permits. It includes, for example, a population of whale sharks in the Gulf
of Mexico counted from small planes flying low over the water, and birds
tallied by the number of nests on cliffs. Depending on the species, tools
like camera traps and evidence like trail droppings help scientists estimate
the population in a certain place.
This year’s update includes almost 32,000 such populations.
There’s a temptation to think that an average 69 percent decline in these
populations means that’s the share of monitored wildlife that was wiped out.
But that’s not true. An addendum to the report provides an example of why.
A grizzly bear in British Columbia. One controversy surrounding the index has
been whether a small number of populations in drastic decline call into
question the overall results. Roberta Olenick/All Canada Photos, via Alamy
Imagine, the authors wrote, we start with three populations: birds, bears and
sharks. The birds decline to 5 from 25, a drop of 80 percent. The bears fall
to 45 animals from 50, or 10 percent. And the sharks decrease to 8 from 20,
or 60 percent.
That gives us an average decline of 50 percent. But the total number of
animals fell to 92 from 150, a drop of about 39 percent.
The index is designed that way because it seeks to understand how populations
are changing over time. It doesn’t measure how many individuals are present.
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“The Living Planet Index is really a contemporary view on the health of the
populations that underpin the functioning of nature across the planet,” said
Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at WWF and an author of the report.
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climate crisis.
Another important factor is the way monitored populations end up in the
index. They don’t represent a broad, randomized sampling. Rather, they
reflect the data that’s available. So there is quite likely bias in which
species are tracked.
One controversy has been whether a small number of populations in drastic
decline call into question the overall results. Two years ago, a study in
Nature found that just 3 percent of populations were driving a drastic
decline. When those were removed, the global trend switched to an increase.
The paper sparked a flurry of responses in Nature as well as additional
explanation and stress testing for this year’s update. On the bright side,
the authors note that about half of the populations in the Living Planet
Index are stable or increasing. However, when they tried excluding
populations with the most drastic changes in both directions, down and up,
the average descent remained steep.
“Even after we removed 10 percent of the complete data set, we still see
declines of about 65 percent,” said Robin Freeman, head of the indicators and
assessments unit at the Zoological Society of London and an author of the
report.
Rescuers tried to free a whale from shark nets off the coast of Queensland,
Australia, last year. Nine Network, via Reuters
Yes. Some scientists think the report actually underestimates the global
biodiversity crisis, in part because devastating declines in amphibians
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/science/frogs-fungus-bd.html> may be
underrepresented in the data.
And, over time, the trend is not turning around.
“Year after year we are not able to start improving the situation, despite
major policies,” said Henrique M. Pereira, a professor of conservation
biology at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research who was
not involved in this year’s report. “At most we have been able to kind of
slow down the declines.”
Latin America and the Caribbean saw the worst regional drop, down 94 percent
from 1970. The pattern was most pronounced in freshwater fish, reptiles and
amphibians. Africa was next at 66 percent; Asia and the Pacific saw 55
percent. The region defined as Europe-Central Asia saw a smaller decline, at
18 percent, as did North America, at 20 percent. Scientists emphasized that
far steeper biodiversity losses in those two areas likely occurred long
before 1970 and aren’t reflected in this data.
Scientists know what’s causing biodiversity loss. On land, the top driver is
agriculture, as people turn forests and other ecosystems into farmland for
cattle or palm oil. At sea, it’s fishing. There are ways to do both more
sustainably.
If climate change is not limited to 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably 1.5
degrees, its consequences are expected to become the leading cause of
biodiversity loss in coming decades, the report said.
In December, the nations of the world will gather to try to reach a new
agreement to safeguard the planet’s biodiversity. The last one mostly failed
to meet its targets
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/climate/biodiversity-united-nations-report.html>.
The Living Planet report offers evidence for how to succeed this time, Dr.
Shaw said. A critical lesson is that conservation doesn’t work without the
support of local communities.
“When we get really focused conservation efforts that incorporate the
community, that have the communities stewarding the outcomes because they
benefit from it, we see that it is possible to have increases in
populations,” she said. “Which is really the bright spot.”
