Animals | Wild Animals

Few field biologists bother to check the daily price of soybeans or palm oil. This is an oversight because the market value of these commodities—along with that of beef, corn, sugar, and coffee—may over the coming decades define the future of rare species more profoundly than will any other driver of habitat loss.

Eric Dinerstein, Vice-President, WWF (US) (1)

Introduction to the problem and scale

• Of all mammals on Earth, livestock make up 60%, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. 70% of all birds are farmed poultry, 30% are wild (3) These figures have changed dramatically over time.
• Humanity, despite representing just 0.01% of all living things, has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans have increased in large numbers (4)
• 1 million wildlife species are faced with extinction as a consequence of human activity (5)
• Studies show that population and species extinctions are proceeding rapidly, and a sixth mass extinction may already be underway (6)
• Wildlife is disappearing 1,000 times faster than a ‘normal’ background rate. (7)
• There has been a 68% decline in the average size of populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians in just over 50 years as rainforests, savannah and pasture are destroyed (8)
• Wild animal populations are also impacted by climate change – if global temperatures are limited to 2 degrees Celsius, about 25% of the planet’s plants and animals are likely to disappear (9)
• Wild animals are integral to healthy eco-systems upon which humanity depends.

Link to intensive animal farming

• Wildlife habitats such as forests and savannahs are being destroyed to grow soy and palm oil to feed industrially farmed animals and to provide pasture for cattle - this is driving many species towards extinction (10)
• This process of species depletion and habitat loss has accelerated in the years since the second world war following the adoption of large-scale industrial agriculture across much of the globe.
• Biodiversity loss in the Amazon’s forest and rivers pose a significant threat to a variety of species, some endemic, others endangered, and many of which are still unknown (11)
• 70% of the forests cleared in South America are now under pasture (12)
• Brazil is home to half the world’s Jaguar population, but their numbers are shrinking as their habitat is destroyed to make way for soya plantations. 13 million hectares of South American land have been taken to grow soya, mainly to feed industrially farmed animals (13)
• Half of the rainforests in Sumatra have been replaced with palm plantations used for animal feed. Habitat destruction has led to a 70% reduction of the Sumatran elephant population in the last 10 years (14)
• The process of over-fishing to provide vast quantities of fish as animal feed prevents wild populations from recovering natural levels of biodiversity and removes the natural food source for native species.
• Since the 1960s the number of Dead Zones has almost doubled every decade. There are now more than 400 coastal dead zones in the world causing environmental harms and devastation to wildlife. (15)

Link to the relevant SDG(S)

• SDG 14: Life below water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, sea and marine resources for sustainable development
• SDG 15: Life on Land: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss (16)

Source: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/