[oc] Latin America’s wildlife population has plummeted to less than 1/10th of what it was 50 years ago

Posted by latinometrics

12 comments

  2. This is probably somewhat biased by the fact that the rest of us had already thoroughly decimated our wildlife before 50 years ago

  3. It’s impossible to know the full scale of roadkill, but one estimate is that 360 million birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals are killed on the roads in the US each year, while across Europe it may be 200 million birds and 30 million mammals. Extensive studies make clear that roadkill is not a random event; factors like time of the year, time of the day, and the volume and speed of traffic are all important. As evolution dictates, birds and animals also adapt, some more successfully than others. These studies point to ways of reducing roadkill.

    Some animals will not cross any roads, and most animals will not cross the busiest roads. Roads, particularly busy roads, thus have the effect of creating “islands” of countryside, and we know that islands experience a progressive loss of biodiversity. We know this from the famous study of Barro Colorado, a 15 km square island that was created in 1924 during the construction of the Panama Canal. The island has been studied more intensively than almost anywhere else on the planet, and despite strenuous conservation efforts a quarter of forest bird species have been lost. Busy roads have divided the planet into 600,000 islands with quieter roads creating even smaller islands. The result is progressive loss of biodiversity.

    Roads, which have been called “the Anthropocene’s battering ram”

  4. Scientists now are finding the case that traffication is as important—and possibly more important—in the destruction of wildlife than industrial farming, habitat loss, and hunting, the usual suspects. Whether it is as or more important matters less than the recognition than it is very important and that “almost nobody seems to have noticed it.”

  5. Wondering if there is a better sub, like dataisscaringtheshitoutofme or dataiscringeworthy or datatoscarechildrenwith

  6. Just fyi. This model is based off of the Living Planet Index. This index has been heavily criticized for overstating wildlife population loss. Interestingly enough, WWF doesn’t dispute the criticism.

    I personally believe they use it more as a fund raising tool than a scientific tool.

    I was trained as a formal ecologist and believe wildlife population is a concern, but state real science not an advertising/fundraising tool.

    Here’s a layman friendly article about it: https://communities.springernature.com/posts/the-living-planet-index-is-not-a-reliable-measure-of-population-changes

  8. Nearly 130% decimation is very impressive.

    But decimation is 1 in every 10 being killed, so does 130% mean 1.3 x 1/10 to make 1.3 in every 10 killed or is it actually 0.77 x 1/10 (because if the negative response variable) to make 0.77/10 being killed.

    Like does 130% decimation indicate more decimation or less decimation?

  9. All that rainforest for grain to feed cattle. wonderful. As wildlife goes, so will we

  10. Our World in Data has a nice article about this metric

    [https://ourworldindata.org/2024-living-planet-index](https://ourworldindata.org/2024-living-planet-index)

    “First, let’s clarify what this *doesn’t* mean. It doesn’t tell us anything about:

    * The number of species lost
    * The number of populations or individuals that have been lost
    * The number or percentage of species or populations that are declining
    * The number of extinctions

    Any headlines claiming that we’ve “lost 73% of wildlife”, “73% of species have gone extinct” or “73% of species are declining” are incorrect.

    What this metric tells us is that across the 34,836 studied wildlife populations, the *average* decline was 73%. As we’ll see later, this doesn’t mean 73% of populations are in decline; in fact, around half of the studied populations were in decline, while half were either increasing or stable.”

  12. Critters around Cocaine Labs doesn’t bode well for product

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