Humans have destroyed 10% of the Earth since the 1990s

The Earth has lost 10 percent of its overall wilderness area in just the past two decades, according to a new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Published in the journal Current Biology, the new report said our planet has lost an area of wilderness equivalent to twice the size of Alaska, with the Amazon and Central Africa being the hardest hit.

The study team said their work emphasizes a pressing need for international policies to identify the necessity of wilderness areas and to discuss the unparalleled threats they face.

“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 marginalized communities — are completely ignored in environmental policy,” study author James Watson, a geographer from the University of Queensland in Australia, said in a news release. “Without any policies to protect these areas, they are falling victim to widespread development. We probably have one to two decades to turn this around.”

The study team said much policy focus has been compensated to the decline of species, but comparatively tiny was recognized approximately the decimation of entire ecosystems, particularly wilderness areas which have a tendency to be fairly understudied. In the study, the scientists mapped wilderness areas worldwide, with “wilderness” being considered biologically and ecologically unchanged landscapes free of human impact. The scientists then contrasted their modern map to one generated by the same procedures in the early 1990s.

This comparison revealed around 20 percent of the world’s land is wilderness, with the majority being situated in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and the Australian continent. However, contrasts between the two maps revealed almost 10 percent of Earth’s wilderness has been lost since the 90s. Those losses have happened mainly in South America, which has seen a 30-percent drop in wilderness and Africa, which has seen a 14-percent loss.

“The amount of wilderness loss in just two decades is staggering,” said Oscar Venter of the University of Northern British Colombia. “We need to recognize that wilderness areas, which we’ve foolishly considered to be de-facto protected due to their remoteness, is actually being dramatically lost around the world.”

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Image credit: Thinkstock

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