NEW DELHI: There has been a steep 73 per cent decline globally in the average size of ‘monitored wildlife populations’ in just 50 years (1970-2020), said the WWF’s Living Planet Report-2024 with experts underlining an alarming decline in the population of three vulture species in India between 1992 and 2002.
The report, carrying the Zoological Society of London’s Living Planet Index (LPI), noted strongest decline in freshwater populations (85 per cent) followed by terrestrial (69 per cent) and marine populations (56 per cent) among the 34,836 monitored wildlife populations of 5,495 vertebrate species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles.
The report, released on Thursday, also highlights how the ecological degradation and habitat loss, driven primarily by the food system, combined with pollution and climate change increases the likelihood of reaching local, regional and global tipping point — a critical threshold resulting in potentially irreversible change.
In the Indian context, it cites an example of Chennai, saying the rapid urban expansion in the city has resulted in an 85 per cent decline in wetlands areas during the period leaving the people vulnerable to both droughts and floods.
“When severe drought hit the region, it caused the city’s major reservoirs to run dry and groundwater levels to plummet in 2019. Without its wetlands to retain and recharge water supplies, the city of 11.2 million people was left vulnerable and forced to truck in water to meet basic needs like drinking, cooking and bathing,” said the report.
Referring to a 2022 nationwide survey in India, experts from WWF-India noted that the white-rumped vulture population has dropped by 67 per cent, the Indian vulture by 48 per cent, and the slender-billed vulture by a staggering 89 per cent compared to their populations in 2002.
Since vultures provide essential ecosystem services by removing carcasses, recycling nutrients and reducing transmission of some diseases, they called for an urgent need to protect these critical scavengers and maintain ecological balance.
Citing an example of an increase in tiger population, they, however, noted that despite a decline in many wildlife populations in India, some have stabilised and shown recovery largely due to proactive government initiatives, effective habitat management and robust scientific interventions.
Explaining the tipping point, the WWF-India experts, including Sejal Worah and Dipankar Ghose, also flagged that more than 36 per cent of the country’s forest cover has been estimated to be prone to frequent forest fires, noting that India detected a total of over 4.48 lakh alerts for forest fires between 2021 and 2024.
At a regional level, the fastest declines in ‘monitored wildlife populations’ have been noticed in Latin America and the Caribbean (95 per cent) followed by Africa (76 per cent) and Asia and the Pacific (60 per cent). The report noted that the declines have been less dramatic in Europe and Central Asia (35 per cent) and North America (39 per cent), saying this reflects the fact that large-scale impacts on nature were already apparent before 1970 in these regions.
Noting that over half of GDP (55 per cent) is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services, the report called for making progress on the global goals for reversing nature loss by 2030 through transforming energy, food and finance systems.
“Nature is issuing a distress call. The linked crises of nature loss and climate change are pushing wildlife and ecosystems beyond their limits, with dangerous global tipping points threatening to damage Earth’s life-support systems and destabilize societies. The catastrophic consequences of losing some of our most precious ecosystems, like the Amazon rainforest and coral reefs, would be felt by people and nature around the world,” said Kirsten Schuijt, director general of WWF International.