Source: The 2022 Living Planet Index Is Out. Here’s How to Understand It. – The New York Times
Oct. 12, 2022
It’s clear that wildlife is suffering mightily on our planet, but scientists don’t know exactly how much. A comprehensive figure is exceedingly hard to determine. Counting wild animals — on land and at sea, from gnats to whales — is no small feat. Most countries lack national monitoring systems.
One of the most ambitious efforts to fill this void is published every two years. Known as the Living Planet Index, it’s a collaboration between two major conservation organizations, the World Wide Fund for Nature, widely known as the WWF, and the Zoological Society of London. But the report has repeatedly resulted in inaccurate headlines when journalists misinterpreted or overstated its results.
The assessment’s latest number, issued Wednesday by 89 authors from around the world, is its most alarming yet: From 1970 to 2018, monitored populations of vertebrates declined an average of 69 percent. That’s more than two-thirds in only 48 years. It’s a staggering figure with serious implications, especially as nations prepare to meet in Montreal this December in an effort to agree on a new global plan to protect biodiversity. But does it mean what you think?
What the data does, and doesn’t, mean
Remember that this number is only about vertebrates: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Absent are creatures without spines, even though they make up the vast majority of animal species (scientists have even less data on them).
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