According to WWF's 2022 living planet report, our wildlife population has decreased by 69% since 1970, all over the world plant and animal life has plummeted in the last couple of decades which seriously threatens our biodiversity and negatively impacts our climate.
"In its most comprehensive finding to date, this edition shows an average 69% decline in the relative abundance of monitored wildlife populations around the world between 1970 and 2018. "
The WWF report states that land change is the primary reason for this decline, which includes things such as deforestation or any other act that takes away natural lands and repurposes them for human use. However, it also states that if we aren't able to reverse or alter the current climate and it continues to get warmer then that will then be the biggest contributor to the loss of biodiversity.
"Land-use change is still the biggest current threat to nature, destroying or fragmenting the natural habitats of many plant and animal species"
How Climate Change has already affected our wildlife
In 2015 the Bramble Cay Melomys, a small rodent, was officially considered extinct due to the causes of climate change, making it the first ever mammal species to die out due to climate changes we have caused. This is just a sign of things to come if we don't manage to revert the effects or even somewhat reduce them, many more species of animals and plants could go extinct. Climate change has already negatively affected our wildlife and will only continue to get worse if we don't all start trying to stop it, even individually small things add up, however, if we are to majorly reduce climate change groups, companies and individuals together would need to put in the effort to help save the animals habitats.
The effects are global
You may not think that climate change is affecting your local wildlife and is mainly affecting larger densities of animals such as the amazon rain forest, and while these places are still severely affected smaller populations like that in the UK is in heavy decline also. In 2022 the Uk is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world with only half of its biodiversity remaining, with the global average being 75%. The reason for this huge loss of nature is mostly due to the fact that 72% of UK land is reserved for agriculture with another 8% being land that has been built on leaving only 20% for natural life to grow and flourish. While the UK's case is particularly severe this is happening all over the world on both smaller and larger scales, making it a threat we can only solve if individuals and large companies heavily affecting the climate both do their part to help reduce the loss of biodiversity.
What can we do?
Apart from my aforementioned comment about needing everyone to work together in order to help revert the effects, individually, we can do lots of small things that might not seem to have an impact but over time will. The basics include using less energy and finding alternate ways to get around such as walking, bikes, or even public transport, which while still adding to greenhouse gas emissions is still a lot more efficient. We can also eat more vegetables and fruits which have a smaller environmental impact to produce compared to meats.
If you are more interested in how power affects climate change, here is another article that goes into much more detail surrounding the specifics of energies and how they affect our climate.