The World’s Wilderness Will Disappear By 2100, According To New Study

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by Whitney Webb
True Activist

A study published in Current Biology says modern day practices will eliminate the world’s remaining wilderness in less than 85 years if nothing is done.

Wilderness, the undeveloped lands and forests of our world that have defied civilization’s attempts to tame them, are in danger of disappearing entirely. A new study published in Current Biology shows that attempts to protect remaining wilderness areas have done little to stabilize the effects of wilderness loss, which occurs at nearly double the rate of wilderness protection. In less than two decades, the amount of wilderness lost measures 3.3 million kilometers, an area twice the size of Alaska and one-tenth of the world’s entire uncultivated land. The study blamed logging and timber companies, livestock grazing, corporate exploitation, industrial pollution, conventional agriculture, irresponsible land clearing, and other damaging practices that continue unabated despite the immense damage they cause to the planet.

This unprecedented loss of wilderness puts life on the entire planet at risk and is much more of a threat than climate change. Wilderness areas are refuges for important ecological and evolutionary processes that can function without human intervention, strongholds for endangered biodiversity, buffers for regulating local climates, world oxygen production, and the lifeline for many of the world’s indigenous communities. Losing wilderness represents what is arguably the largest threat to life on this planet as its ecological functions are essential to all life and its damage is usually considered to be irreversible.
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