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Humanity Has Wiped Out 60% of Animal Populations Since 1970 (theguardian.com)
Artem Tashkinov shares a report: The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else. Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species -- Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83% of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF, said: "We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last one that can do anything about it."
Yeah, well except 99 percent of the species that ever existed are extinct.
Here is a brilliant XKCD chart illustrating this very thing.
Forest is being cut down to make room for for cattle grazing. the XKCD graphic above shows just how bad this situation is. Us humans outnumber ALL wild animal put together and out cattle outnumber us!
100 times as much water is used to create a lb of beef than a lb of crops! Producing 1 calorie of animal protein uses over 10 times as much fossil fuels as 1 calorie of plant protein!
I think in the long run the only chance we have is for us all to go vegan. It will save the animals and the planet and therefore us as well.
Cleerline
Here in Texas, the rattlesnakes are about the only predators that keep the mice and rat populations down. Coyotes assist, but the rodents are in the billions. Feral hogs are another major issue here. Coyotes cannot take them and the mountain lions and other large cats are only in certain areas. My father-in-law has so many wild hogs on his land (East Texas), that we could literally shoot them from dusk to dawn for a week straight and not really even put a dent in their population. They are highly destructive to crops, domestic farm stock, and irrigation areas. I tend not to shoot coyotes unless they are a nuisance, but we'll shoot hogs all day long. Their meat is nasty and most of them are unfit to eat. The foxes have largely been pushed out by the coyotes. And the deer... so many deer. If humans don't cull them, their predators cannot kill enough of them and quite a few end up starving to death in the winter because the hogs eat up all the acorns and other tree nuts.
"the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species -- Homo sapiens"
Cyanobacteria wiped out 90% of life on the planet. They still have us beat by a landslide.