A shocking new report on global biodiversity details what it calls “a catastrophic decline” in wildlife populations, ahead of a major international conference on biodiversity.
On Monday, October 21, the United Nations will convene a two-week conference in Cali, Colombia, called COP16. On the agenda are climate change and the protection of life. But hanging over this meeting is a new report from the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). The 2024 Living Planet Report describes “a catastrophic 73% decline in average wildlife populations in just 50 years.”
Care is concentrated at points around the world – from the lawns of the Serengeti to the urban jungles of the San Francisco Bay Area. Creatures large and small are threatened.
“That means that in my lifetime, 50 years, we have seen a 73% decline in the average size of these wildlife populations,” said Dr. Robin Freeman, expert on global biodiversity at the Zoological Society of London.
Among the biggest threats are humans and the warming planet. Both lead to increasingly rapid change that makes it impossible for species to adapt successfully.
“Species are often exquisitely attuned to local environments that have taken thousands to millions of years through co-evolution to create some sort of selection in their genomes and over which traits will survive,” said Stanford biology professor Dr. Elizabeth Hadlijk. “When we change things so quickly, we unravel those connections, and extinction happens in the blink of an eye.”
Humans are encroaching on critical habitats for multiple species and endangering many ecosystems, threatening the planet’s biodiversity. The consequences are affecting elephants in tropical forests, hawksbill turtles on the Great Barrier Reef and even migratory birds passing through the Bay Area.
“Most of our native birds need a lot of biodiversity in the plants and insects to survive,” explains Dr. Katie LaBarbera, senior biologist and scientific director of the Land Bird Program at the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory, who noted how Around the world, some bird populations are declining.
In addition to birds, some fish are also in trouble. According to the WWF report, winter Chinook salmon numbers in California have declined 88% since 1970. Shasta Dam blocked access to their historic spawning grounds, while climate change threatens the Sacramento River – a major migration route.
Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and tribe members are working with the Maori people of New Zealand and federal fish biologists to return Chinook salmon to the McCloud River and find passage for them.
In the 19th century, millions of salmon eggs from the McCloud River were exported to 30 states and 14 different countries to create new salmon runs. New Zealand was the only location where the new run flourished, and in 2005 the Māori invited the Winnemem Wintu to bring home wild salmon eggs to the McCloud.
“The water system here in California is really dependent on how we care for the salmon,” Sisk says. “If the salmon survive, people will survive. If we want to drain the rivers and rename them warm water rivers, people will suffer too.”
These Bay Area experts say protecting our planet’s wildlife is an urgent wake-up call that no one should ignore.
“Biodiversity can never be recreated,” Hadly said. “It’s what we depend on for our food, for our medicine, for our housing. It is so crucial to our humanity.”
“The pieces of nature that we have around us are very precious and we are not going to save them if we don’t really appreciate them first,” LaBarbera added.
“I wish we could educate everyone about our salmon,” Sisk said. “They’re not just a food to eat. They burrow into the gravel and let all the silt go to the sea and they let that river breathe into the groundwater systems.”
The hope with this upcoming conference is that countries will agree on new standards on how to restore nature and halt its decline.
