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10 Percent of the World's Wilderness Has Been Lost Since 1990s (livescience.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Live Science: Wilderness areas around the world have experienced catastrophic declines over the last two decades, with one-tenth of global wilderness lost since the 1990s, according to a new study. Since 1993, researchers found that a cumulative wilderness area twice the size of Alaska and half the size of the Amazon has been stripped and destroyed. The shrinking wilderness is due, in part, to human activity such as mining, logging, agriculture, and oil and gas exploration. The researchers said their findings underscore the need for international policies to recognize the value of wilderness and to protect wilderness areas from the threats they face. Central Africa and the Amazon saw the most wilderness decline, the researchers found. Of the roughly 1.27 million square miles (3.3 million square kilometers) of global wilderness lost, the Amazon accounted for nearly one-third, and 14 percent of the world's wilderness was lost from Central Africa, according to the study. The researchers determined that only 11.6 million square miles (30.1 million square km) of wilderness is left, which equates to just 20 percent of the Earth's total land mass. The study was published online in the journal Current Biology.
Can't do anything about it even if I wanted to. That's the future's problem, not mine.
"Wilderness," what's that? Wild? In some cities, wilderness is increasing. Untouched by humans? Then we wouldn't know about it, would we?
It takes 10 paragraphs to find that the author's "wilderness" is an area which man doesn't habitat. Why not just write about population growth, and figure out by what factor Malthus was off?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Older link but relevant.
if you look at how big the rainforest is in south america and think "10 %" you sorta have to wonder about the modeling to get to that number.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
As though we haven't fully committed to fucking this planet up yet. Still got another 90% get to it!
What's your point? That after 20 years of sustained growth and expansion the people that live on the edges of vast swaths of wilderness (Central Africa, The Amazon) are slowly eroding that wilderness?
What are they supposed to do, live in poverty, stop growing their civilizations on the edges of, say, the Amazon, because all the developed nations used up their wilderness growing their countries? We got ours, now you need to stop?
I suspect there is still plenty of wilderness - for example, The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. (That's about 1/4th of our country that is, essentially, wilderness.)
Ken
Right, that's why Communist Governments encourage so many of their citizens to immigrate to the West. I forget, which communist countries encourage their citizens to leave?
Ken
More and more, humans treat themselves with man-made stuff. Mainly food. The million years naturally made human being injects himself tons of non-existing in nature (at that concentration/purity level) matter. The logical outcome of that in a near future is an accelerated "evolution" / adaptation of the body - cancers etc... Men will have to count on an adequately evolved medicine able to counteract these effects on themselves. And in case of a conflict/problem that makes this medicine unavailable, men will get extinct in a matter of a few generations.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The current population of human beings on this planet is unsustainable. This can either change by design or we can wait for the inevitable wars over increasingly scarce resources. Anyway, I hear soylent green tastes like chicken.
To be honest, I would have thought it was more than 10%.
Loss of trees and vegetation are what will be our downfall due to global warming. Trees and vegetation are what scrubs the co2 out of the air. With less vegetation, the co2 will continue to rise. If you look at studies, man made co2 emissions don't come close to what is emitted by volcanoes and such. Yes man is causing global warming, but the fix is to quit cutting down every flipping tree you see and plant more trees. The earth could take care of us if we would just let it. The problem isn't really the urban sprawl thing either. It is mans desire to cut down trees to make tooth picks and all of the other stuff that we use wood for. Recycled plastic and such and or aluminum can easily be turned into "boards" to build houses. Not only would that eliminate the need to cut down trees but the houses would be stronger.
STOP, rethink your take on survival. Wash, Rinse,and REPEAT!!!
An invasive species is a plant, fungus, or animal species that is not native to a specific location, and which has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment.
I hear an invasive species which escaped from Africa has been causing unprecedented damage to the environment.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
We are a parasite species but your "FIX" is utterly vacuous. The human contempt continues to be be greed and a self implored feeling of never ending growth. I believe that the human species is inherently good. We will prevail over this implied destruction. We will learn to be non-parasitic.
The solution is simple. Birth control and education. In almost every nation where that's available we have negative population growth(not accounting for immigration) or they are headed in that direction.
They fantasize about deploying suitcase nukes and being the preeminent back-door-slut to Putin. We can continue down this path to vaporize the whole planet. IMO. FuK U.
We forget ourselves, and what we are made of.
Our value system is totally fucked: the new housing index. Apples building new buildings in a Silicon Valley of empty buildings. We've used so much raw materials and fuel for pointless wars. We don't turn off the lights when we leave the room. We have too many instant on appliances with no regulation. Our government hasn't asked us to watch energy usage since the 1970s.
Perhaps we ought to be extinct.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Who are the people/corporations buying this land?
This excellent video really helps you understand the population situation, including the hard to grasp concept of "population fill in".
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E
Population is indeed going to level off after adding about 4 billion people, mostly in Africa, over the next 70 years.
And we can finally have the Rapture!
That's how it works right guys?
Our family company deals with the canadian logging industry. Those canucks really know how to strip forests bare.
Since 1990? Geez...that's setting the bar pretty low...let's go back a few hundred years, I bet it's more like 80%.
Sadly one of the main culprits almost sounds like a footnote - 'logging' is often done to clear land for livestock, just look at the Amazon. And most of the 'agriculture' is also to support that same livestock. In the US, 1/2 of ALL land is used for livestock - either space they take up, or for producing their food (and 70-90% of all corn, soy and wheat grown in the US is fed to livestock). XKCD has a stunning graphic showing the mass of all mammals on the planet.....and much is (you guessed it) livestock, followed by humans, with a sprinkling of wild mammals. NatGeo illustrates how much land there is on the planet, how much remains 'untouched', and how much we consume. We use up almost 40% of the entire non-ice land for 'agriculture', the vast majority as pastures, and you'll find much of the cropland is also devoted to this area.'Free range' is actually worse, demanding even more space than 'factory farmed'.
If you really care about this issue, consider what you're eating. When it comes to resource use (water, energy, space), livestock are at the top, or near. And it's a change we all can make. (And there's never been greater vegan options to choose from, give them a try if you haven't!)
Oh sure, focus on the loss of wilderness rather than the energy and minerals that have been sourced!
Antarctica alone is 14 million square kilometers, so the hysterical figures were obviously obtained the 'traditional way'.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Saw that a while back. The maths makes sense but does not consider whether 10-11Bn people is sustainable, how, and whether it is even desirable to have so many people on the planet. Considering how a scarce millions migrating to Western Europe from Syria/M.E. lead to political paralysis and chaos, it won't be easy to deal with many millions relocating as resources like drinking water become hard to get in India/China, or many areas in Europe and Africa that look likely to become more like desert as the global climate crisis progresses.
Only 10%, that actually sounds optimistic.
Looks like some mod doesn't like that humans technically fit the definition of an "invasive species". Or perhaps someone is too stupid to realize that all humans come from Africa, not just the ones with more melanin.
That's pretty impressive and a testament to human ingenuity! If we are smart enough to destroy so much nature in so little time we should be smart enough to find alternatives to destroying it too.
-- Cheers!
Don't you get tired that every news outlet* is incessantly telling us how bad things are and how worse they're going to get?
Do you feel it's more than a little exageration when humans get equated with parasites?
Have a look at the Positive News Thread and start your day with the good stuff: positive fact-supported stories, often from the backpages of the same industry that is trying to depress us into oblivion.
*Except those that focus on technology. Ahem, I'm look at you Slashdot.
Yes and for that the yankees killed them all...
Prehistoric people in North America are strongly suspected as having been instrumental in finally killing off the last if the prehistoric horses and camels there, although climate change may also have been a factor.
see?!
On the other hand, biomass has been increasing, arable footprint is likely to shrink, people are better fed and live better, no shortage of wilderness.
http://www.econtalk.org/archiv...
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Only 20% of the earth is wilderness? One look at a map of the earth or a globe will show you this isn't remotely true. Canada, Siberia, China, the American West, Antarctica, Africa, South America - all have vast area of wilderness.
Thing that irritates me is that I'm a tree-hugger and this kind of sensationalist crap only makes the cause look like childish idiots. That's not helping.
The same types of people that deny global warming will not confront that behind loss of wilderness is the same issue of an exploding population and lack of mandatory birth control. Pollution is simply the consequence of human activity. Less human activity yields less pollution. It could not be simpler. But you can count on nothing being done to stop the horrors which are upon us.
Once wilderness is gone, it cannot be restored because the ecological processes that underpin the ecosystems are destroyed, the researchers said. The only option, they said, is to proactively protect what is left.
This is true only because they define wilderness so narrowly. I've seen what happens when people no longer inhabit an area, wilderness takes over. The ecosystem can grow and restore itself. If we define "wilderness" only as areas undisturbed by human activity then, by definition, wilderness can only shrink or stay the same. Which then leads one to ask, how did that ecosystem get there in the first place? The answer is either it grew there naturally, or some deity wished it into being.
I don't know if I should assume these people are Creationists or that they didn't think this all the way through. What I really think though is that they are trying to simplify the problem to the point it has become a lie. They lie to us hoping we don't think it through.
They also assume that "wilderness" is always better than what human activity can create. I've seen many great gardens, animal habitats, parks, arboretums, etc. where there was just barren land before. If allowed to occur naturally it would have taken thousands of years for so much plant and animal life to spread like that.
Do these people think humans can only destroy? People create things too, beautiful things even. People can even make the world better. Preserving wilderness at the cost of humanity's ability to grow, learn, and explore is beyond wrong, I believe it is a mental illness.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
All companies around the world produce negative externalities that have a detrimental effect on the ecosystem of the Earth. It is profitable to obscure them so as not to spend money on acting to correct the externality. There are tens of thousands of negative externalities that all contribute to destroy the environment the human species depends on, with carbon based pollution being the alpha externality of them all.
That's why the denialist rhetoric is hyperactive about carbon externalities. The very fact that there are so many other externalities to deal with is a huge expense to business. If you can obscure cabon's role as an externality then you can bring the role of all externalities into question and avoid those costs.
PR is always cheaper than actually doing something.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
https://youtu.be/3LKQ3eX9pEg?t...
There's a lot of wilderness on the moon, Venus, and Mercury. They aren't doing anybody any good.
Native Americans learned to live in harmony with the land and take only what they need.
If we tried to "live in harmony with nature" (aka slash-and-burn agriculture plus hunting, or whatever other old technologies you like) at our current population levels, then two things would happen:
1) We'd kill off a huge chunk of nature
2) Nature would kill off a huge chunk of us
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Don't deny the problem is overpopulation. The communist governments of the west depend on immigration...
I don't know about that. Communist governments are quite adept at killing tens of millions of their own people.
Just have to post this one
http://imgc-cn.artprintimages....
TFA states that once an area ceases to be wilderness, it can never be wilderness again.
By about 1840, nearly all of New England was farmland. No wilderness, except for areas too steep or rocky for agriculture. Now, most has reverted to forest. Keeping an area open requires constant effort; trees colonize unmowed areas pretty quickly.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Let's get rid of 25% by 2030! /s
The plane and its lift are a simple system. Ecology, especially of the planet, is more complex. It's not apparent, but look up ecological debt. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7988648.stm
I would take 1960 Kissimmee Fla. to what there is now, but to a new person it looks fine.
To me they really tore down paradise and put up a parking lot.
Nice to see where his priorities are.
We have all of these problems, the root cause of which is overpopulation, yet we refuse to control population or reproduction.
You reap what you sow.
The correct word is 'destroyed' or maybe 'disrupted' if you want to go lightly. Using lost completely disconnects the responsibility of the act.
The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. (That's about 1/4th of our country that is, essentially, wilderness.)
Could you explain the logic of "It's owned by the government, therefore it's wilderness"? A lot of federally-owned area is used for cattle grazing, logging, indian reservations, recreation, man-made bodies of water, military facilities, etc.
The federal government does have designated wildernesses, but they form only about 4.5% of the US land mass. (FWIW, over half of the designated wilderness is in Alaska.) Of course, the government's definition of wilderness is not the same as the definition in TFA, but assuming that 25% of the US landmass is wilderness by any reasonable definition is absurd.
All of the land mentioned is controlled by corrupt governments.
Governments do not know how to efficiently use land.
Every country that follows these policies has this problem. The US doesn't.
Sure, we have national parks, but agriculture is largely private.
Thus, it pays for an individual to continue to produce with the same land, whereas areas like the Amazon; they do not replant.
Why should they? They have no cost incentive to.
The Earth is a wet ball of rock. Rocks can't get parasites, they aren't living organisms.
The ecosystem existing on that ball of rock comprises all life, therefore any organism is a component of the ecosystem. So, even under the "ecosystem as organism" model, no organism can be a parasite on the global ecosystem itself as that would generate a logically impossible infinite loop of self-parasitism.
Reading the article, there are plenty of claims being made, but I'm not seeing any basis for them other than the assumptions of researchers. Some, like "supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalized communities", seem inherently contradictory. If there are communities in these areas, they cannot be wilderness. If the people are politically and economically disadvantaged, wouldn't development be the route to correcting that?
Did Muhammad have anything to say about Allah's feelings on birth control? I wasn't aware of anything that says that followers of Islam cannot use condoms. Can you point to this directive of Allah's?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
This means the ones who are brown, down to Earth, the color of excrement, or would claim to be Americans. It is very clear, from an objective and emotional point of view. Instead it seems we went against Syrians et al despite being nearer to Europeans than to Africans. WE will regret it if we dont, or... TELL ME: WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE INDEPENDENT AFRICAN SPACE PROGRAM, EH? Mind that some of them KNOW how to turn pink and look like very WASP old and wealthy Americans... SEE in Facebook the NASA pictures of jungle fires this year: they managed to create a WALL HALF CONTINENT ACROSS OF FIRES. YOU here in Slashdot will be persecuted one by one because of this remark because Africans do know this is seerious and they are EXPECTING IT.