Humanity’s devastating effect on wildlife, and what you can do

This week we’ve seen figures suggesting that 60% of the Earth’s wildlife has been wiped out by humans since 1970. SIXTY PERCENT. If you originally had 10 tigers, you now only have four. If you originally had 100 birds, you now only have 40.

I avoided reading the article linked above for a couple of days, because, to be honest, the title itself was too painful. The WWF’s research found that it was not just large animals that had suffered – creatures across the board had disappeared – down to the crucial insects that keep our trees and plants alive, too.

Just have a look at these god-awful graphs. The final one is the most telling, I think – South and Central America is the worst-affected, and also just happens to be one of the areas of the world where rainforest and natural land is cleared the heaviest, for farm animals and animal-feed crops, such as soy.

We’ve already heard that switching to a meat and dairy-free diet is the best way of reducing your impact on the Earth, and halting, or even reversing, this awful march towards species extinction, and climate change.

So what can we do?

Go veggie, or even better vegan (I’m still working on the second part myself, but getting closer every day). Invest in companies researching and developing food that doesn’t rely on animals or plants. Drastically reduce our general consumption levels, especially relating to single-use plastics, to avoid them ending up in the sea, or in landfills.

Finally, get angry. Make noise about the fact that we are killing off the resources we all need to survive – or more accurately, large corporations and governments are. No-one ever achieved anything by hoping it’d eventually improve, and we’re running out of time to actually make a difference.