Vertebrate wildlife populations across the globe have dropped dramatically over the past 50 years, according to a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, published last week. Between 1970 and 2018, populations declined an average of 69 percent, the researchers say.
“It is very much a red flag and a warning signal that… the life support system on Earth is in trouble,” Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, tells NPR’s Leila Fadel. “It is a very sharp decline.”
Every two years, the WWF releases its Living Planet Report based on the Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Index (LPI). This index measures the “state of the world's biological diversity based on population trends of vertebrate species from terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats,” per its website. This year’s edition looked at more than 5,000 species and nearly 32,000 animal populations.
