Global biodiversity sees 'staggering' declines

A 10th of the world's unspoiled wilderness areas have been lost since the 1990s, experts have said. The new findings, from a global ecosystem study, show 'staggering' declines affecting the last bastions of undisturbed nature. The researchers are calling for urgent action to preserve biodiversity on Earth.

In the last 20 years, wilderness regions amounting to an area twice the size of Alaska have vanished, the research reveals. The Amazon basin and central Africa have been hit the hardest. The scientists, from the University of Queensland in Australia, mapped wilderness areas around the world and compared the results with a previous similar map produced in the 1990s.

'Wilderness' is defined as a biologically and ecologically intact landscape free of any significant human disturbance. Their findings are reported in the journal Current Biology. 'Globally important wilderness areas, despite being strongholds for endangered biodiversity, for buffering and regulating local climates, and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalised communities, are completely ignored in environmental policy,' said lead researcher Dr James Watson.


Source: Daily Mail
Fri 9 Sep 2016 at 08:23