Animal populations have declined by around 69% in the last 50 years, a slide so significant many scientists regard it as the sixth mass extinction.
The biggest decline were observed in Latin America and the Caribbean regions. Tanya Steele of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) UK attributes this to deforestation and its impact on wildlife habitats and ecosystems. Another factor that contributed to this decline was changes to land use and design, which has negatively impacted the migration routes of animals and wildlife.
Robin Freeman, Head of Indicators and Assessments Unit at the Zoological Society of London, called for urgent action to be taken for the “recovery of abundance, reduction of extinction risk and the ceasing of extinctions”.