The wild is disappearing — but these conservation programs may hold the answer.
Untouched wilderness is hard to come by these days. In fact, less than 25% of our planet’s land and 13% of its oceans can be classified as wild. And more of it is rapidly disappearing, taking with it essential BIODIVERSITY. In the past 50 years, wildlife populations declined by 50%. Conservation efforts are more dire than ever to ensure we KEEP EARTH WILD.
Problems Facing the Wild
- Agriculture — Our food system is one of the leading drivers of biodiversity loss — degrading critical land and clearing forests. For 86% of species facing extinction, agriculture is their biggest threat. By 2050, 90% of animals may lose their habitat because of how we produce and cultivate our food.
- Poaching, tourism, trafficking — Poaching is a $23 billion industry. 1,000 rhinos, 20,000 elephants, and 100 million sharks, are just a few of the species poached annually. Wildlife tourism is five times more lucrative than poaching, contributing to 40% of total tourism. Half a million animals have been taken from their natural environments and forced into wildlife tourism. Around 350 million plants and animals are sold on the black market each year.
- Pollution — An equivalent of five garbage bags full of trash covering every inch of coastline in the world is how much plastic waste enters the ocean each year. Because of that, 100 million marine animals die from plastic waste and 100,000 marine animals die from entanglement every year. But other forms of pollution have dangerous effects too: underwater noise, pesticides, mercury, lead and air pollution.
- Climate Change — In the next 50 years, nearly 1 in 3 plant and animal species may be lost to climate change.
Protecting the Wild
