The Earth Lost 10 Percent of Its Wilderness in Only 2 Decades
The Earth Lost 10 Percent of Its Wilderness in Only 2 Decades
The rate at which pristine areas are being destroyed is catastrophic, say scientists.
JOHN METCALFE @citycalfe Sep 8, 2016
Cows graze next to burned Amazon rainforest in 2013 near the city of Novo Progresso, Brazil. (Nacho Doce/Reuters)
Picture a plain the size of India made of grass, exposed dirt, and the smoking remnants of vegetation. Thats what humanity has gifted the world since the early 1990s thanks to logging, mining, energy exploration, development, and other agents of landscape destruction.
The planet lost roughly 1.2 million square miles of wilderness over this period, equivalent to one-tenth of its total stock, according to a new study in Current Biology.
http://www.citylab.com/weather/2016/09/earth-has-lost-110th-of-its-forests-in-only-2-decades/499085/?utm_source=feed