Humans Wiped Out Two-Thirds of the World's Wildlife in 50 Years

[sl8]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-wiped-out-two-thirds-worlds-wildlife-50-years-180975824/

Humans Wiped Out Two-Thirds of the World’s Wildlife in 50 Years

Threats to global biodiversity are also threats to humans, experts warn

By Nora McGreevy
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

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.

[...]

[SharonClark]

1. So profoundly sad.

[RKP5637]

2. Give them a few more years and humans will be wiped out too ... seriously. n/t

[Loki Liesmith]

3. Good progress

We are ahead of schedule.

[CrispyQ]

4. Agent Smith :

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Indigenous People were in harmony with the world.

They may still have the guiding principles for our species’ survival.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-conservation-efforts-can-learn-from-indigenous-communities/

[CrispyQ]

7. It seems to be a part of the human condition,

the competitive world view vs the cooperative world view. You're on your own vs we're in this together.

We watched "Capital in the 21st Century" a few nights ago. Wow. Very interesting documentary. There was a scene about an experiment done with a Monopoly game. They had two players and they flipped a coin. One player got to roll two dice & collect $200 when they passed GO, & the other player only got to throw one die and collect only $100 when they passed GO. Obviously, with such a skewed playing field the player with the advantaged advanced quickly. And in every case, every single one, the winning player turned into a jerk. Some were big jerks and some were just jerkish, but they all took an opportunity to boast about their winning. At the end of the game not one winner said that they won because they won the coin flip—they all claimed they won through superior playing skills.

[Kid Berwyn]

8. The empires are now corporate.

Thank you for the heads-up on “Capital in the 21st Century.” You probably know, “The Corporation,” an analysis of the antisocial and even sociopathic behavior by the organized looters.

The bastards are accelerating the ruination of our blue sphere, truly an Eden in space. For money.

Did you hear what the mining company Rio Tinto recently did in Australia to a continually occupied 46,000 year old cave system and its rock art? For iron.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/16/rio-tinto-repeats-apology-for-blasting-46000-year-old-rock-shelter-to-expand-mine

Greedheads. For shame.

[CrispyQ]

12. Wow. They took this right out of the republican playbook.

“That’s why we haven’t apologised for the event itself, per se, but apologised for the distress the event caused.”

The Corporation should be required viewing. Revoking corporate personhood would go a long way to reining in these behemoths. The founders never meant for corporations to have Constitutional rights like We the People. I had social studies, civics, and American problems in my elementary & secondary education and I never heard of corporate personhood until I read about it in a letter to the editor about five years after high school. So much we should teach our kids but don't.

Meet the Corporation - The Sierra Club

I'm not big on the Bible, but that phrase about love of money being the root of all evil sure rings true.

[Kaleva]

38. Pre-historic humans are thought to have caused the extinction of many species.

The Mayan civilization is believed to have collapsed because it had overtaxed the local environment. There is also evdence the same fate befell the Ancestral Puebloans.

"Others suggest that more developed villages, such as that at Chaco Canyon, exhausted their environments, resulting in widespread deforestation and eventually the fall of their civilization through warfare over depleted resources."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_Puebloans#Migration_from_the_homeland

[misanthrope]

40. Exactly

We are the same primates we've been for the last 150,000 years. We just acquired more powerful tools to wreak our destruction.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. "Wake me when we kill the plankton."

Said the repuglian. Like a runaway diesel locomotive, human stupidity.

[hunter]

9. We can solve these problems, but ignorance and anti-intellectualism gets in the way.

Universal realistic sex education works. Free birth control works. Educating and empowering women works. Raising people out of poverty works.

Personally I think we should be paying people to experiment with lifestyles having very small environmental footprints.

What we now call economic "productivity" isn't productivity at all, it is in fact a direct measure of the damage we our doing to earth's ecosystems and our own human spirit.

[moondust]

10. Maybe plastics will get the rest.

The disturbing truth about plastic recycling

[LizBeth]

11. My adult son was reading scientific journals on climate change and I got a call last night.

He has been reading these papers and having conversation for years but last nights conversation was very disheartening and has stuck with me since. Him talking about this and so much more and how long he has in his lifetime with all that is happening and the stupidity of people. It was such a sad conversation as he considered his and younger folks future.

I was curious how others handle these conversations with their adult kids. Looking at their future and saying they have only so long and won't have the same kind of future that we all have.

[iluvtennis]

13. It's a difficult conversation. I just tell mine that there is hope and it's never to late for humans

to start to do the right thing. We gotta have hope or else you feel lost.

[LizBeth]

15. I do the same. Mine has no want to bring a kid into the world. A generation of aware young people

that think it is horribly irresponsible to experience the joys of having children. So many of the young kids do not talk about a future with family, but that they adamantly will not have a child with what we create in our greed, stupid, uncaring.

[iluvtennis]

29. My two have the same sentinment as yours...they don't want children. But I tell them,

"never say never", things change in life.

[LizBeth]

31. I can't say that any more when my son puts up the possibility of him not living out his full life,

as it is.

[iluvtennis]

32. I feel you. Sending a hug.

[LizBeth]

33. Lol... And this, is what we do with the kids. Yup. Losing my ACA in middle of covid I ask my Trump

family, while talking to son about his life expectancy. How am I suppose to feel about you people?

Waiting for one to answer.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

34. I'm 54

And I chose I didn't want any kids in the 5th grade.
And I haven't had any.

[LizBeth]

35. That is what choice is all about.

Unfortunately, today, kids do not necessarily feel they have a choice.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

37. I chose because

I didn't think the world would be around too long.

My father was an asshole but he knew stuff and showed me what exactly was changing. Basically he told me about climate disruption. There was no particular name for what he showed me,but he knew. How he knew I'm left to wonder.

He had a clearance in the military. He told me alot of stuff. And sadly a significant portion of what he told me has come to pass.

[roamer65]

24. First step to any meaningful change is realizing the true situation at hand.

The longer we delay, the less the carrying capacity of the planet when any solution is found.

I am extremely glad I don’t have children right now. I strongly encourage young people not to have them.

[LizBeth]

25. Any of the thinking young people certainly agree. When they cannot even see themselves getting

to old age, not going to encourage them to have kids.

[rainin]

14. Has anyone else noticed that there are no bugs on the car headlights anymore

My car headlights used to be covered with bugs. The windshield, too. Now, there are none. Ever. There is mud, and bird droppings, but no bugs.

[LizBeth]

16. We had that conversation too, and yes, I have noticed, we do not have to clean our windshields of

bugs. I can remember when, just driving out of town a short distance into the fields we would have to make a stop to clean off windshield. Or a bug is coming and splat.... eeeew. And we do not have that now.

[LizBeth]

18. So, because of these conversations regardless of my fears, I stirred up the courage just now to

"capture" a bee? flying bug and put it outside instead of killing it, lol. That is big, but I have to do my part. .

[rainin]

19. LOL We stopped killing spiders when we learned they help with mosquitos.

It's our observation that mosquitoes haven't been impacted by climate change. Ugh!

But, thanks for doing you part

[LizBeth]

21. Lol. So, mosquitos. I was reading last night to catch up some to son conversation and they are

saying the NW with dry and increased heat will start being impacted with disease carrying mosquitos and ticks. Some will always survive. My son says our food supply will be cricket guts, or something. Highest protein. He said we will not lose the crickets because will be easy producing to feed us. What a world.

[rainin]

27. And, of course, they will be diseases previosly unknown, difficult to diagnose, and impossible

to treat. I'm just being a happy optimist right now. All this cheery news is the 2020 curse. Or is "2020 curse" redundant?

[LizBeth]

28. +1

[misanthrope]

41. The mosquito species I know of

like heat but can't breed without water. A dry environment wouldn't seem to suit a creature that needs H2O to foster larvae.

[LizBeth]

43. Lots of water in the NW.

[misanthrope]

44. I understand the PNW's wet reputation but you wrote:

"– the NW with dry and increased heat will start being impacted with disease carrying mosquitos –"

Though the heat might be in favor of more mosquitoes -- although mosquitoes can be found further north than the PNW as is -- dryness would seem to work against that.

[LizBeth]

46. Because I did not want to go into all the explanation of what they say will happen with climate

change in the Northwest. Yes, we have lots of water. And yes it is going to get more dry here, and hotter during the summer months. Our springs are very wet. (I keep editing to add more information to try and nip the ongoing posts.)

Both can be true statements.

[roamer65]

22. Yes. This year the front of the car has been pretty bug free.

I am now utterly elated when I see a bumblebee.

kinda elated.

[NickB79]

26. Same here

Very few bugs compared to 30 yr ago, and I live in a rural farming area.

Too much insecticide and not enough fallow land.

[misanthrope]

42. I have noticed a precipitous decline in moths and other nocturnal flying insects

I live in the rainiest city in the U.S.. The environment is wet and hot, basically a swamp. Our outdoor lights used to have loads of insects around them throughout the steamy summers, so much so that we had geckos on the roof of the carport who ate well all summer long by chasing those that lit on the ceiling.

Over the last seven years or so, the bugs have all disappeared. We don't see them or the geckos anymore.

The love bugs, a species of march fly common to this stretch of the coast would appear in the late summer marking the arrival of hurricane season's height. They were so numerous you would have to clean off your car nearly daily before their acidic guts wreaked havoc on the paint job. Those have waned, too, in the last decade.

Numerous yellow butterflies would appear in September, migrating southward for the oncoming winter. They are more rare now than in previous decades.

[dalton99a]

17. Kick

[roamer65]

20. Richmond Valentine from "Kingsman" (2014)

[Nay]

23. Karma's gonna be a bitch. nt

[StarryNite]

30. Agriculture Department's 'Wildlife Services' Killed Nearly 1.5 Million Native Animals in 2018

WASHINGTON— The arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture known as Wildlife Services killed nearly 1.5 million native animals during 2018, according to new data released by the agency this week.

The multimillion-dollar federal wildlife-killing program targets wolves, coyotes, cougars, birds and other wild animals for destruction — primarily to benefit the agriculture industry. Of the 2.6 million animals killed last year, nearly 1.5 million were native wildlife species.

“I’m outraged that the Department of Agriculture continues to needlessly slaughter our important native wildlife,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s simply no scientific basis for continuing to shoot, poison and strangle more than a million animals every year. Even pets and endangered species are being killed, and it has to stop.”

According to the latest report, the federal program last year intentionally killed 357 gray wolves; 68,186 adult coyotes, plus an unknown number of coyote pups in 361 destroyed dens; 515,915 red-winged blackbirds; 338 black bears; 375 mountain lions; 1,002 bobcats; 173 river otters plus 537 killed “unintentionally”; 3,349 foxes, plus an unknown number of fox pups in 133 dens; and 22,521 beavers.

More at link:

[link:https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/agriculture-departments-wildlife-services-killed-nearly-15-million-native-animals-in-2018-2019-06-04/|

[I_UndergroundPanther]

36. Fucking big agriculture

Fucking greed fuck the big farms and the murderous Dept. Of agriculture.

We need small farms that are ecologically sound and not abusive to the animals.

Wish Biden would do something about that.

[PufPuf23]

39. Humanity as known to people now alive is toast.

Only questions in a population crash is how fast and brutal and how much is self inflicted and how much is nature doing its thing.

[DFW]

45. Every person holding elective office ought to read the novel "The Green King."

Of course, then they'd think the guy was crazy..............