'We're wiping out life on earth': WWF outlines massive falls in animal numbers

Baby elephants at the David Sheldrick Elephant & Rhino Orphanage at Nairobi National Park in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo / AP

Conservationists have issued a demand for urgent international action after a major report uncovered an unprecedented crisis in nature that threatens to devastate the world economy and imperil humanity itself.

Only a global pact on the scale of the Paris Agreement on climate change will save the natural world from irreversible collapse, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said after publishing a report showing a cataclysmic decline in global wildlife populations.

Global vertebrate populations have fallen by 60 per cent since 1970 as human activity destroys their natural habitats in grasslands, forests, waterways and oceans, the organisation said in the Living Planet Report 2018.

Over the past 50 years expanding agricultural activity and the over-exploitation of natural resources to feed a growing world population, particularly its booming middle class, has pushed many ecosystems to the brink of collapse.

"Humans are living beyond the planet's means and wiping out life on earth in the process," the report warns.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, 89 per cent of indigenous mammals like the jaguar and anteater have been wiped out.

More than 80 per cent of freshwater populations have vanished, with freshwater fish accounting for a higher rate of extinction than any other vertebrate.

"We are the first generation to know we are destroying our planet and the last that can do anything about it," said Tanya Steele, the chief executive of the WWF. "The collapse of global wildlife populations is a warning sign that nature is dying."

Habitat loss will have a profound impact on human well-being, conservationists say.

Crops pollinated by animals account for 35 per cent of global food production, while habitat loss means that the soil for crops to grow is not being replenished with nutrients.

The loss of South American rainforests has reduced rainfall thousands of kilometres away, also imperilling crop production.

As many as 70,000 species of plants are used commercially or in medicine, posing a danger to efforts to fight disease and protect industry.

What’s nature ever done for you?

The WWF Living Planet Report 2018 is coming soon #LPR2018 pic.twitter.com/Hghvml5RbN

— WWF (@WWF) October 24, 2018