THE OVERLOOKED WILD

Meet the species that demand conservation attention

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Halting the loss of biodiversity is one of the greatest conservation challenges of the 21st century.

Despite decades of effort, the pace of decline shows little sign of slowing. Since the 1990s, ecologists have warned of an impending mass extinction. It would be the Earth’s sixth—but unlike any that has come before. Today’s crisis is driven by a potent mix of pressures: climate change, pollution and the relentless exploitation of land, sea, plants and animals. What makes this crisis unprecedented is that every major ecological upheaval can be traced back to a single species: Home sapiens.

So far, the damage has been stark: at least 680 vertebrate species have been driven to extinction since 1500. Losses are accelerating as a rapidly warming climate intensifies the pressures on already strained ecosystems. The latest “Living Planet Report”, released in 2024 by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London, paints a grim picture. Drawing on data from over 5,000 vertebrate species, it finds that global wildlife populations have declined by an average of 73 per cent in just 50 years. Terrestrial species have fallen by 69 per cent, marine species by 56 per cent and freshwater species by a staggering 85 per cent. Habitat loss and degradation, driven largely by the food systems, remain the most widespread threats, followed by overexploitation, invasive species and disease. Such declines, the report notes, are more than statistics: they are early warning signals of rising extinction risk and the unravelling of the ecosystems on which life depends.