From 10 billion down to 7 billion birds.
The population of birds in North American has fallen by a third in 50 years. Science.
Statistic of the decade: amount of rainforest lost in Amazon.
"Insect apocalypse" in the New York Times Magazine garnered widespread attention.
In the United States, scientists recently found the population of monarch butterflies fell by 90 percent in the last 20 years, a loss of 900 million individuals; the rusty-patched bumblebee, which once lived in 28 states, dropped by 87 percent over the same period.
the overall abundance of flying insects in German nature reserves had decreased by 75 percent over just 27 years. If you looked at midsummer population peaks, the drop was 82 percent.
It is estimated that, since 1970, Earth’s various populations of wild land animals have lost, on average, 60 percent of their members.
What we’re losing is not just the diversity part of biodiversity, but the bio part: life in sheer quantity....Finding reassurance in the survival of a few symbolic standard-bearers ignores the value of abundance, of a natural world that thrives on richness and complexity and interaction.
Scientists have begun to speak of functional extinction (as opposed to the more familiar kind, numerical extinction). Functionally extinct animals and plants are still present but no longer prevalent enough to affect how an ecosystem works. Some phrase this as the extinction not of a species but of all its former interactions with its environment — an extinction of seed dispersal and predation and pollination and all the other ecological functions an animal once had...
Other News (Link)
Last female Yangzte Giant Softshell Turtle died
Last Sumatran Rhino in Malaysia died
Jaguar and Koala populations hit by wildfires in Brazil and Australia
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