A new study shows that our planet has 10% less wilderness than in the 1990s.
Via the CS Monitor:
Ten percent of Earth’s wilderness has disappeared since the 1990s, according to a new study published in the journal Current Biology.
Over the last 20 years, we’ve lost a total area amounting to twice the size of Alaska, researchers report. But, experts say, there’s still time to save the remaining wilderness areas – and they hope the recent findings will spur change.At the moment, only about 23 percent of the world’s land area is made up of wilderness, the study found. Most of this wilderness can be found in North Asia, North Africa, Australia, and North America (primarily the northern parts of Canada). South America has experienced the greatest loss, with a 30 percent decrease since the ’90s, and Africa follows with 14 percent.
“The wilderness decline around the world is most in the tropical biomes, the tropical rain forests have lost a lot of wilderness,” study co-author Oscar Venter, of the University of Northern British Columbia, told CBS News. “A lot of the Amazon has been lost, the mangrove ecosystems, which are really important wilderness areas have been hit. They are a nursery ground for a lot of the world’s wildlife – young fish are reared in these mangrove ecosystems, they are a base for a lot of the fisheries. Now, there is almost no wilderness left in the mangroves.”
Other things from the ’90s we have less of: golf visors and light up sneakers, so it isn’t all bad.