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.

Comments

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't do anything about it even if I wanted to. That's the future's problem, not mine.

Re:Humanity is a parasite species.

[penguinoid]

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.

We Are Made of Wilderness

[BrendaEM]

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.

Re:Suspicious figures

[mrbester]

"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"

So, not including Antarctica, humans occupy 80% of the total land mass of the planet? Doesn't look like that from the light pollution pictures that were recently released. The taiga (boreal forest) alone is larger than 20% and as they are including other areas like deserts and prairie / veldt in their "calculations" they must have missed some decimal points or the planet would look more like Coruscant.