The Earth Has Lost a Tenth of Its Wilderness Since the 1990s

Research released Friday in the journal Current Biology reveals how humans have destroyed around 3.3 million square kilometres of wilderness in the past 25 years, which is a tenth of all wilderness on Earth.

The global study, led by James Watson from the University of Queensland, mapped the world's wilderness—areas defined as "biologically and ecologically largely intact landscapes that are mostly free of human disturbance." The majority of these once pristine areas were lost across Africa and South America, particularly in the Amazon basin.

"A total of 27 ecoregions… have lost all of their remaining globally significant wilderness areas since the early 1990s," the report notes. "Including those areas in the Northwestern Congolian Lowland Forests and the Northern New Guinea Lowland Rain and Freshwater Swamp Forests ecoregions."

Comparing maps from the 90s with today, the researchers also found there's only 30 million square kilometres of wilderness remaining in the world—with the majority in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia. The good news is much of this "is still composed of large contiguous areas of at least 10,000 kilometres squares" rather than tiny chunks, which might have been otherwise separated from one another.

But the study also found that, while protected areas have increased since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, conservation efforts haven't kept pace with wilderness loss. "The increase in protection of wilderness has lagged significantly behind losses over the past two decades," the researchers explain.

One thing that becomes clear from this research is that the fallout from wilderness loss isn't limited to global warming—although that is a big consequence of the deforestation occurring in Asia and South America. There's also the spectre of habitat destruction, which "increases the risk of extinction for species that are already highly threatened."

These photos highlight the realities of this report. Land-clearing for agriculture, logging for timber, and subsequent bushfires, desertification, and erosion are all the consequences of short-term thinking. And as the the report notes, this process is often irriversibale. "Without concerted preservation of existing wilderness areas, there will be a diminished capacity for large-scale ecological restoration."