Report: Wildlife Populations Declined by 69 Percent Over Past Half-Century

Wildlife populations declined by 69% around the world between 1970 and 2018, according to a study released by the World Wildlife Fund and Zoological Society of London.

The report looked at 2018 data from almost 32,000 populations of 5,230 species, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish.

Deforestation, human exploitation, pollution and climate change were the biggest drivers of the loss.

Climate change could become the leading cause of biodiversity loss if rising temperatures aren't limited to 1.5°C, according to the report.

This "serious drop ... tells us that nature is unraveling, and the natural world is emptying," said Andrew Terry, director of conservation and policy at the Zoological Society of London.

Wildlife populations in the Caribbean and Latin America were hit especially hard, according to the report, as were the population of pink river dolphins in the Brazilian Amazon, which plummeted by 65% between 1994 and 2016.

Wildlife populations continue to decline at a rate of about 2.5% per year, said Terry.

"Nature was in dire straits and it is still in dire straits," said Mark Wright, director of science at WWF-UK. "The war is definitely being lost."

However, the report offered some glimmers of hope. While the eastern lowland gorilla population in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Kahuzi-Biega National Park fell by 80% between 1994 and 2019 due to bushmeat hunting, the mountain gorilla population near Virunga National Park increased from around 400 individuals in 2010 to over 600 by 2018.

Information from Reuters was used in this report.

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