What sets our home planet apart from others are the lush forests and jungles, grasslands, swamps, expansive deserts and sprawling savannahs that blanket its terrain.
However, each year, Earth has lesser and lesser of these natural spots because of human activity and disturbance, a new report has revealed. Earth's wilderness is rapidly eroding.
Vanishing Wilderness
Approximately 10 percent of the planet's wilderness — the biological and ecological landscapes that are typically free of human disturbance — has vanished in the last two decades alone, the new study says.
In order to determine the loss of the planet's wilderness, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society evaluated satellite and survey data recorded since the 1990s.
By definition, wilderness landscapes begin to cease not when humans settle there, but when human activity disturbs ecosystems via land conversion, large-scale infrastructure projects and land conversion.
In the end, researchers discovered that globally, 1.2 million square miles of wilderness — twice the size of the state of Alaska — have been lost in the last 20 years.
James Watson, study lead author and an expert from Australia's The University of Queensland, says the amount of wilderness that has vanished in just two decades is staggering. In fact, the greatest loss in wilderness occurred in South America at 30 percent, and in Africa at 14 percent, they found.
A few areas such as the Northwestern Congolian Lowland Forests, as well as the Northern New Guinea Lowland Rain and Freshwater Swamp Forests ecoregions, have lost almost all of their former wilderness.
Such negative losses on wilderness could have strong impacts on indigenous communities, wildlife and climate change, researchers say.
What's more, the destruction of a small chunk of ecosystem could negatively affect the rest, especially because wilderness regions are interdependent and interconnected.
Good News?
When it comes to restoring the lost wilderness, Watson says it cannot be done. Once wilderness areas are gone, the ecological processes behind these ecosystems are also gone.
"And it never comes back to the state it was," says Watson.
On the other hand, the new study offers good news: much of Earth's remaining wilderness or nearly 80 percent is still made up of large chunks of land. This is crucial for species living in these regions because if habitats become disturbed by clear-cutting or roads, the animals are less likely to survive.
And there is still hope to abate further losses. Between 2005 and 2012, statistics show that deforestation rates in Brazil decreased to 70 percent because of conservation and protection efforts by soybean farmers and cattle ranchers in the country.
Watson says it is clear that more is required to strengthen the protection of Earth's remaining wilderness. This includes basic conservation, as well as transforming grasslands and forests into reserves and protected areas.
Details of the new report are published in the journal Current Biology.
Photo: Marcelo Braga | Flickr
