Photoville and Wildlife

As part of my daily walking routine (when the pandemic started, my daily step count came down to an alarmingly low figure so I decided to get a Fitbit and start walking more every day. I don't use the Fitbit anymore but the routine stuck and I re-discovered how much I love stretching my legs, seeing other people, trees, buildings - anything other than my laptop screen, clearing my head and just getting fresh air), I passed by Photoville and stopped by some of the posters to read the stories accompanying the pictures.

Photoville is an annual exhibition where all kinds of thought-provoking photographs are displayed in public spaces and can be viewed for free. One of the showcased stories that caught my attention was The Tigers Next Door by Steve Winter.

Photoville (Photo by Gabby Jones - New York Times)

Winter explained that there are more tigers living in cages in the US than remain in the wild in Asia. Tigers also suffer widespread abuse from an exploitative black market that includes unregulated (and sometimes illegal) activities such as the cub-petting business. For the latter, cubs are torn away from their mothers before they can even open their eyes and then sold off so they can be petted by tourists. After just four months, they become too big and dangerous so they need to be disposed of.

This heart-wrenching story reminded me of a passage I had read some time ago about the dramatic decline in wildlife populations. I decided to find out more about it and ran into disquieting figures.

According to the Living Planet Report published by the World Wildlife Fund, wildlife populations have declined by more than 60% in less than 50 years. I'm sure you're familiar with at least some of the many appalling ways in which humanity is not-so-slowly destroying the planet. However, it's difficult to understand the full-scale of the impact when most of the destruction is happening miles away from us and we can't really see it from the comfort of our climate-controlled apartments with fully-stocked fridges and a never ending supply of running water and electricity.

Just take a wild guess, how many tigers do you think are out in the wild? How many giraffes? How many koalas? The figures are much much lower than I imagined, and the populations continue to dramatically decrease. To get a better picture, I looked up the historical populations of a few species that came to mind ("famous" ones like lions, tigers and orangutans) and tried to graph them along with the historical human population. We humans so vastly outnumber other species that adding our population to the graph made all the other bars "disappear" because they were so small in comparison.

This is what the graph looks like without humans:

Note: the figures for all species (except for humans) are for populations living in the wild.

I tried a different angle and plotted the percentage change in population from 1990 to 2020. Unsurprisingly, humans have nearly doubled their numbers while each of the other six species has lost more than 20% of their populations. I know this is a very small subsample (I would have liked to include more species but it was hard to find complete and reputable data for comparable years) yet the results are consistent with every scientific article I found: the declines in wildlife populations of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians in the past decade are dismal. Tigers, for example, have seen their population decline by more than 96% since 1990.

Personally, I think it's incredibly concerning that this is all happening and most of us don't even know about it. For me, for example, learning that there were fewer than 5,000 tigers left in the wild came as a huge shock. Despite the dire figures, not all hope is lost, at least not yet. Conservation efforts continue and awareness seems to be increasing. There's not much we can do at the individual level but we can still have an impact with easy, every-day acts (for example, Top 10 Ways you can Protect Biodiversity | CropLife International). For the sake of our planet and our own futures, we need take action and we better do it soon.

Photo by Save Wild Tigers

“While the trends are alarming, there is reason to remain optimistic. Young generations are becoming acutely aware of the link between planetary health and their own futures, and they are demanding action from our leaders. We must support them in their fight for a just and sustainable planet.” Rebecca Shaw (WWF Global Chief Scientist)