African Forest Elephants are threatened by poaching and habitat loss due to industrial agriculture. Photo courtesy of Flickr via Ray in Manila.
By Catelyn Fitzgerald ’23
Science & Environment Editor
On Oct. 12, 2022, a press release from the World Wide Fund for Nature announced the findings of the 14th edition of their biennial Living Planet Report, revealing a 69 percent average wildlife population decline alongside other cutting-edge wildlife and ecosystem health data.
According to their website, the World Wide Fund for Nature was first established in Switzerland in 1961 with the aim to “secure the funding necessary to protect places and species that were threatened by human development.” Wildlife conservation initiatives remain at the organization’s core, but it has since grown to support a range of scientific research and climate change action.
The Living Planet Report 2022 is based on the Living Planet Index, which is managed by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London. The report defines the Living Planet Index as “an early warning indicator” that records “trends in the abundance of mammals, fish, reptiles, birds and amphibians around the world.” The Living Planet Index is a calculation of population trends among selected wildlife populations. To confirm the findings of the publication, the index was calculated again while excluding species and populations with the most extreme changes in size, and found that these outliers did not affect the final results of the study.
The report explained that the Living Planet Index data that informed this year’s report represents its largest dataset yet with over 5,230 species included, calling it the “most comprehensive analysis of the global state of nature from a wide array of voices and perspectives.” Researchers placed special emphasis on species in Latin America and the Amazon, the report stated.
New research methods were implemented to make the 2022 Living Planet Report better-informed, including biodiversity risk maps created for a 2022 publication from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These maps used data from the report to visually indicate changes in wildlife population rates. The report also used data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, which determined “threat hotspots” for wildlife, or areas where key threats to wildlife populations, such as logging and agriculture, are present.
The Living Planet Report’s primary finding of a 69 percent global wildlife population decrease was further broken down throughout the publication. The report found that, while all of the defined geographic regions experienced declines in wildlife population abundance, the level of population decline greatly varied among regions. Latin America showed the greatest average decline in population abundance at 94 percent. In contrast, Europe and Central Asia experienced the lowest level of decline at 18 percent, with North America following closely behind at 20 percent.
The report also investigated population changes among different types of species. According to the publication, freshwater species showed the greatest decline at 83 percent. This number was determined by The Freshwater Living Planet Index, a subset of the Living Planet Index based on freshwater mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile and fish population trends.
The IUCN, which helped inform the work of the World Wide Fund for Nature, issued its own quadrennial publication that summarizes “the conservation impact of the The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017–2020.” According to the IUCN, the organization added 43,662 new species to the Red List between 2017 and 2020. The Red List now monitors a total of 128,918 species, 28 percent of which are “threatened with extinction.” New species highlighted by the publication include the Giant Pseudoscorpion — a scorpion relative that can only be found on the five-hectare Ascension Island, a territory of the U.K. — and the Kalimantan Mango, a wild mango which was listed as “Extinct in the Wild.” Additionally, the report highlighted species that had recovered from extinction, including the Guam Rail, which — through the help of captive breeding — is now the “second bird in history to recover after being declared Extinct in the Wild” after the Carolina Condor.
The data presented in the Living Planet Report has applications that go beyond wildlife conservation, the publication stated. It explains that “declines in abundance are early warning indicators of overall ecosystem health.” For the same reasons, abundance also reacts quickly to beneficial environmental changes, meaning that scientists will know when conservation efforts are effective soon after they are implemented.
According to the publication, the data presented is aimed at spurring a change towards better biodiversity conservation. The report leaves readers with plenty of ideas for how this change can be achieved by outlining conservation solutions from agricultural diversification to taking a new approach to the economy. The executive summary of the publication concludes, “The planet is in the midst of a biodiversity and climate crisis, and that we have a last chance to act. … [W]e hope it inspires you to be part of that change.”