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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.
In some cities, wilderness is increasing.
I once saw a racoon and 3 cubs walking down Market St in San Francisco. I once saw a coyote on the Embarcadero. There is a family of possums living in the shed in my backyard.
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
Do you know what "wilderness" means?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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
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.
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
The current population of human beings on this planet is unsustainable.
If that were true, then wouldn't the population be decreasing instead of increasing? It's like saying you are in a plane and you slow down to below stall speed and say the lift generated by the wings cannot sustain the weight of the plane yet the plane continues to fly. Until populations decrease, all the evidence shows that the population is sustainable.
i consider sahara to be 'wilderness' and it is expanding. in a few decades, the whole of central africa will be 'wilderness'. so as far as statistics go, we'll be fine.
Maybe you got a point and they didn't include Antarctica.
On the other hand, Antarctica has little foliage. And ifs not green, it won't absorb CO2 and generate oxygen.
If the last wilderness left remaining is Antarctica, we choke to death, pretty much.
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!
You really REALLY think that people eating less meat would reduce farming scale in any way?
Thats just... so cute (being kind here).
Hint: high value land use for livestock is very small compared to total farming, and also tends to be concentrated on poorer land.
Hence, if you want to save your wilderness (which, if it is forests, is usually on better quality land), then time to stop eating
those grains and vegetables! they use far FAR more land area, and are the primary cause of deforestation.
Yes, I know that doesnt fit in with you 'I'm a vegetarian, so *I* am saving the planet!' worldview, but suck it up - its the simple
facts of farming. Livestock farming is much lower impact that crop farming.
So yes, thinking about what you eat - and avoid most of the vegetarian diet if you actually want to make an impact on the scale
of farm land use..
Oh, and by the way, water use is also much lower for livestock compared to dietary value (hint: they dont CONSUME water, they
drink it, and believe it or not they then return it to the paddock, helpfully converted to a farm that helps the grass grow - amazing aint
it!)
Perhaps if you spent a little time actually on farms, this would all be clear - however I suspect your inner city apartment is much more
your speed, right? VeganCyclist? I thought so. wouldnt want to get dirty now would we.
"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.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Yeah, sure we're losing wilderness. If you completely discount the fact that the way we measure wilderness was different ten years ago. The thing about all your global wilderness loss conspiracists - if there wasn't so much money in preservation you wouldn't be doing it.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Well of course you could do something about it, virtually all of the driving force behind this is either economic or due to the expanding population... but it would require something from you. It would be more expensive and less convenient than doing nothing, and it would not entail solving the problem by yourself. It would mean contributing to the solution in a small way for which you wouldn't receive any praise or gratitude, and for which some people would dismiss and insult you.
Maybe the parent was intended as sarcasm, but this is one of those cases where it's hard to tell.
How can you possibly believe we're not losing wilderness when population and resource use have expanded considerably over that time period? The only debate should be how much.
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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.
he current population of human beings on this planet is unsustainable.
If that were true, then wouldn't the population be decreasing instead of increasing? It's like saying you are in a plane and you slow down to below stall speed and say the lift generated by the wings cannot sustain the weight of the plane yet the plane continues to fly.
If the plane were at 100 ft., that would be true. If the plane begins at 100,000 ft., then (given a decent glide angle) it can stay aloft for quite some time after the engines have failed.
Think of it this way: you've got a water pump at the bottom of a hill pumping water into a damaged tank. The tank can only hold so much before it bursts. Maybe you've got days before your little pump can cause a tank failure, but running that pump is still unsustainable. HTH, HAND!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The animals are also invading. Prior to the 20th century, coyotes did not live east of the Mississippi River. Today, they are common from New England to Florida. It is estimated that hundreds live in New York City, subsisting on garbage and rats. Other animals, from raccoons to peregrine falcons, have also adapted to urban living.
This is simplifying the hell out of the issue. About 12 years ago, about a square mile of land was cleared for a big shopping center about a mile from me. We're talking remove every tree, and vegetation, and turn that acreage into something that looked like the surface of Mars.
That summer, the population of all the animals in my backyard exploded. When evicted, the animals don't just die off right away, they migrate, fight with the animals where they try to establish themselves, and a lot starve to death.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not to mention basically all of Canada. More than 85% of Canada's population lives within 250km of the US border.
The rest? Tundra. Forest. "The North", beyond the tree line. That's 10million square kilometers right there, minus about 1 million or so.
Outside of a couple of bigger cities, in that 9M remaining, you'll find a town of 2000 people, 200km from another town. You'll find roads where there are houses (cottages) every 10km or so.
Even where I live? I have a 1 acre lot, there are 49 other lots like it, and surrounding it? Preservation land, and Gatineau Park. Houses stuck in the middle of the forest.
I can tell you that there are bears, wolves, cougars, coyotes, badgers, deer, moose, and about 100 other easily viable wild animals in the area.
I think they ignore the fact that 'rural' areas wilderness too. Animals have *always* lived with man around, for we ARE an animal. Only recently, the last few hundred years, have our cities become so large, and so non-rural.
The bear, the coyote, they are USED to 'oh, that is a man home'. Because man lives someplace, does not make it 'non-wilderness'.
Is it suddenly not nature, because of beavers building a beaver dam? Like this?
http://www.seeker.com/largest-beaver-dam-seen-from-space-1765052359.html
Beavers build homes, just like man, from wood.
So, to really define that 'wilderness is lost', one should define the destruction of wilderness that really isn't for the purposes of living in it. Co-existing in it. Rural housing does just that. Small, population 2000, or population 100 people villages do that too.
So I contend that they are including 'any place man lives', instead of 'these areas have man in them, but left most of the trees and wildlife alone'.
There are trees all around my home, trees on my land, wildflowers in my back yard, and pure nature all around.
Yet, I live 25km from Ottawa, ON -- one of the largest Canadian cities.
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.
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