Animals

A manatee swims in blue-green algae, which has invaded Florida's waterways and put freshwater species at risk. PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The global decline of freshwater megafauna

nationalgeographic.com - by Stefan Lovgren - August 8, 2019

SOME HAVE SURVIVED for hundreds of millions of years, but many of the world’s freshwater megafauna—including sumo-sized stingrays, colossal catfish, giant turtles, and gargantuan salamanders—may soon find themselves on the brink of extinction, according to a new study published.

For the first time, researchers have quantified the global decline of freshwater megafauna—including fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—and the results paint a grim picture. In four decades since 1970, the global populations of these freshwater giants have declined by almost 90 percent—twice as much as the loss of vertebrate populations on land or in the oceans.

CLICK HERE - WWF - Living Planet Report 2018: Aiming Higher

"There cannot be a healthy, happy and prosperous future for people" without biodiversity, the report warns.

nbcnews.com - by Rachel Elbaum - October 30, 2018

The population of the planet's vertebrates has dropped an average of 60 percent since 1970, according to a report by the WWF conservation organization.

The most striking decline in vertebrate population was in the tropics in South and Central America, with an 89 percent loss compared to 1970. Freshwater species have also significantly fallen — down 83 percent in that period.

The Living Planet Index, provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and included in the WWF Living Planet 2018 report, tracked the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians around the world between 1970 and 2014, the latest year for which data was available.