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Earth

Humans To Push Further Into Wildlife Habitats Across More Than 50% of Land by 2070, Study Says 65

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Over the next 50 years, people will push further into wildlife habitats across more than half the land on Earth, scientists have found, threatening biodiversity and increasing the chance of future pandemics. From a report: Humans have already transformed or occupied between 70% and 75% of the world's land. Research published in Science Advances on Wednesday found the overlap between human and wildlife populations is expected to increase across 57% of the Earth's land by 2070, driven by human population growth.

[...] As humans and animals share increasingly crowded landscapes, the bigger overlap could result in higher potential for disease transmission, biodiversity loss, animals being killed by people and wildlife eating livestock and crops, the researchers said. Biodiversity loss is the leading driver of infectious disease outbreaks. About 75% of emerging diseases in humans are zoonotic, meaning they can be passed from animals to humans, and many diseases concerning global health authorities -- including Covid-19, mpox, avian flu and swine flu -- likely originated in wildlife.
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Humans To Push Further Into Wildlife Habitats Across More Than 50% of Land by 2070, Study Says More

Humans To Push Further Into Wildlife Habitats Across More Than 50% of Land by 2070, Study Says

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  • How and Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @01:18PM (#64727116) Homepage Journal
    Ok, with all the news about human birthrates dropping....

    What would be causing people to intrude MORE into wildlife and wooded areas on earth?

    Seems LESS people would mean less need to expand the lands we occupy...?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ok, with all the news about human birthrates dropping....

      Globally the population is still rising although the rate of increase has slowed and it is expected to peak in the mid 2080s before starting to decline.

      https://news.un.org/en/story/2... [un.org]

    • Global population still growing (Score:5, Informative)

      by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @01:30PM (#64727158)

      Ok, with all the news about human birthrates dropping....
      What would be causing people to intrude MORE into wildlife and wooded areas on earth?

      Because global population is still very much increasing and will continue to do so for quite some time to come https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

      On top of that most the growth is third world driven so first world nations are likely to continue to grow in overall population for a good while longer as well.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )
        It isn't. There are 3 countries of any size growing in population. India, Nigeria and the 3rd I don't remember at the moment. Maybe Indonesia. Global population has been shrinking for a couple of years now (perhaps peaked between 2019-2022). Also, the numbers you quoted don't include China's recent admitting that it over-stated its population by several hundred million. Turns out urbanization reduces birth rates significantly. You are working with dated and incorrect information.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          You are working with dated and incorrect information.

          No I'm not. Cite a source as I did if my data is bad.

        • Global population NOT growing (Score:4, Informative)

          by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @02:55PM (#64727384) Homepage

          It isn't. There are 3 countries of any size growing in population. India, Nigeria and the 3rd I don't remember at the moment. Maybe Indonesia. Global population has been shrinking for a couple of years now (perhaps peaked between 2019-2022).

          Don't know where you're getting your data, but you're incorrect. World population is at the moment continuing to grow, although the rate of growth has significantly decreased.
            https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
            https://images.sbs.com.au/80/a... [sbs.com.au]

          I expect you may be thinking about a recent article that the population is predicted to shrink. But the peak is predicted to occur in the late 2080s. Right now, it's still rising.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • You are wrong. Global population is still growing. Africa, in particular, is exploding.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The global population continues to grow, in large part because people are living longer. Longer lives mean more people alive at the same time.

          Maybe you are getting confused with birth rate, which is falling in many places. Not fast enough to offset improvements in healthcare and life expectancy though, at least not on a global level.

          The world is on target from between 10 and 12 billion people by the end of the century.

    • Re: How and Why? (Score:5, Informative)

      by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @01:33PM (#64727168)
      Birth rates dropping doesn't imply reduction in overall population. If in year X birth rates are "4 children per couple" and in year Y birth rates are "3 children per couple", the rate dropped but you still have more humans than the ones that bred.

      It's when rates fall below replacement level that population reduces. Some developed countries have done so, but not all or even most. It is estimated that population will hit 10 billion before declining.

      Because we really need 20% more humans?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      We baked the planet, limiting food supply in certain areas, requiring more intrusion even if our populations are slowly shrinking.

      Cannibalism? Maybe Donnie is on to something with his Hannibal Lecter Theory...

    • Birth rates are falling. Fertility is falling. Population is not, but the fact that most people seem to be convinced it is, and that it's truly something to be concerned about, is a good sign that the propaganda wing of big business, which requires more more more more MORE MORE MORE of everything, always, forever, is working. More humans = more profit potential. Falling birthrates have most of the oligarchs of the world, including those in charge in the United States, to go batshit crazy trying to sort out

      • Birth rates are falling. Fertility is falling. Population is not, but the fact that most people seem to be convinced it is, and that it's truly something to be concerned about, is a good sign that the propaganda wing of....

        From my experience, the people who legitimately think population is falling are a} white, b} men who c} fear immigrants that will take their unfairly large slice of pie.

        Oh, sure, it's okay if Bob the UPS driver down the street "has faith" and know God says 'sex is only for procreation', so has eight kids. Bob's white. But if Amir brings his family of five from Somalia or some other war-torn shit-hole and goes to work as a pharmacist, well, that's just not right.

        Corporate consumption is definitely pres

    • It's times like this Slashdot needs reaccs so we can just laugh-emoji you and move on.

    • What would be causing people to intrude MORE into wildlife and wooded areas on earth?

      Significant portions of the lands we currently occupy will be uninhabitable in another 50 years.

  • Because density [twimg.com] is the solution to overcrowding [twimg.com] (and also stormwater runoff [njfuture.org]).
    • Love to hear how you would do that. Are you going to tell someone in Wyoming they cannot build a shed in their backyard or pave the sidewalk? Let's hear the plan for rolling that out.

  • Another bad Guardian article (Score:4, Informative)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @01:31PM (#64727160)

    Article says:
    "Humans have already transformed or occupied between 70% and 75% of the world’s land. Research published in Science Advances on Wednesday found the overlap between human and wildlife populations is expected to increase across 57% of the Earth’s land by 2070, driven by human population growth."

    Article links to article https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.10... [pnas.org] that says:
    "Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s land was inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands"

    • Re:Another bad Guardian article (Score:4, Insightful)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @02:03PM (#64727276) Journal

      Yep! You really have to cross-check these statistics and percentages they throw around to justify their articles, these days.
      Often, they're misleading or just plain wrong.

      If anything, we have some problems with the particular lands they're choosing to terraform. For example, we know they're chopping down the tropical rainforest at a rapid pace -- and there's a lot of habitat there that probably can't survive anyplace else. Plus, losing that many trees can't be good either.

      But there's also a whole lot of "wide open space" on the planet that I imagine a lot of these studies are blanket-labeling as "occupied by humans" simply because someone has ownership. Throughout much of America, you definitely see this with huge swaths of farmland. It's only "populated" in the sense farmers are growing crops on it. But it's not like we're packing families into new housing developments all over it and paving it with concrete and asphalt.

      • Yep! You really have to cross-check these statistics and percentages they throw around to justify their articles, these days. Often, they're misleading or just plain wrong.

        If anything, we have some problems with the particular lands they're choosing to terraform. For example, we know they're chopping down the tropical rainforest at a rapid pace -- and there's a lot of habitat there that probably can't survive anyplace else. Plus, losing that many trees can't be good either.

        But there's also a whole lot of "wide open space" on the planet that I imagine a lot of these studies are blanket-labeling as "occupied by humans" simply because someone has ownership. Throughout much of America, you definitely see this with huge swaths of farmland. It's only "populated" in the sense farmers are growing crops on it. But it's not like we're packing families into new housing developments all over it and paving it with concrete and asphalt.

        No, but farmed land is not wild land. As someone who actively farmed for a significant enough chunk of his life I still remember it pretty well, there was a big difference in the parts of our land we farmed, and the parts that were left wild. Even pastures aren't necessarily wild. This may not count the same as paved street and high rises, but it is land not available to wildlife in general, despite the roaming coyotes, wolves, and deer crossing over it from time to time.

      • Yep! You really have to cross-check these statistics and percentages they throw around to justify their articles, these days. Often, they're misleading or just plain wrong.

        If anything, we have some problems with the particular lands they're choosing to terraform. For example, we know they're chopping down the tropical rainforest at a rapid pace -- and there's a lot of habitat there that probably can't survive anyplace else. Plus, losing that many trees can't be good either.

        But there's also a whole lot of "wide open space" on the planet that I imagine a lot of these studies are blanket-labeling as "occupied by humans" simply because someone has ownership. Throughout much of America, you definitely see this with huge swaths of farmland. It's only "populated" in the sense farmers are growing crops on it. But it's not like we're packing families into new housing developments all over it and paving it with concrete and asphalt.

        Current World Population 8,172,147,719
        Russia
        - 4,046,810,880 acres
        Canada
        - 2,247,055,257 Acres
        China
        - 2,319,877,459

        :p with just 3 Countries could easily give every single person, man, women, and child a Acre of Land to live on for the Rest of their life, how many other countries do we have left? 160+ ???

        These Stats are completely bonkers, people just trying to fear monger and start a depopulation movement, the only way for that to happen is for Mass Starvation/Famine or Large Scale Genocide, these ar

  • Seeing as how 2070 is a while from now, and also as there's a whole lot of other things we're going to have stop doing in the meantime anyways, maybe we could seize this opportunity to STOP doing the terrible thing that we've always done?

  • Say hello to COVID 2.0 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 22, 2024 @01:34PM (#64727178)
    Epidemiologists have warned us for years that this crap will put humans in close proximity to animals that can breed deadly viruses without themselves getting sick. This plus wet markets equals another round of global pandemics.

    We could control it before it gets out of hand... if we stop election has-been gameshow hosts, bad actors and other people who's only qualification is being good at pretending they're something their not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Zoonotic diseases are too slow. We need to introduce some saber-toothed megafauna into the wilderness to keep human populations in check. And more particularly, inside city limits.

    • Yeah those predictions already happened, SARS-COV-2 was 5 years ago. Is this your Dr Evil impersonation?

    • Epidemiologists have warned us for years that this crap will put humans in close proximity to animals that can breed deadly viruses without themselves getting sick.

      No. People aren't moving into the jungle. They are tearing it down and building a parking lot over it - expanding their urban area - displacing the jungle and its animals. This won't increase our risk of COVID 2.0.

  • How about we make smoking cool again, put lead back into everything and eliminate seat belts? I'm an ideas guy.

  • The global population is dropping rapidly and there is almost zero incentive to build infrastructure to remote places we don't already populate.

    They're not populated for good reasons: they're far from other people, far from commerce lines and infrastructure, and lack critical resources we would want to exploit.

    In 50 years, the Earth's population will be a fraction of what it is today and this alarmism will seem quaint and silly, in retrospect.

    • The global population is dropping rapidly

      No, it's not.

      The birth rate is dropping rapidly, but the population is currently still growing.

      ...In 50 years, the Earth's population will be a fraction of what it is today and this alarmism will seem quaint and silly, in retrospect.

      Not in fifty years. The population is 8.2 billion today, and estimated to peak at 10.2 billion fifty years from now. https://www.un.org/en/UN-proje... [un.org]

      If current trends continue for another century, yes, it will eventually drop to a fraction of what it is today, but not soon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

        You're discounting the effect of: war, famine, and disease.

        Of which we're likely to have quite a bit, if things continue on the existing trajectory.

        • You're discounting the effect of: war, famine, and disease.

          No.

          The population is currently growing. That means, total number of births minus number of deaths is a positive number. Deaths include all causes of death, including war, famine, and disease.

          (and I'll note that despite everything, deaths due to war, famine, and disease have been steadily decreasing over the years. Here's a graph of life expectancy showing that effect: https://chart-studio.plotly.co... [plotly.com] )

    • The only thing that is dropping, and just a little bit at that, is the rate of increase in the global population. The absolute numbers are still screaming upward.

      • We are like yeast in a bottle of sugar. The first few yeast cells dropped into the bottle think it's paradise. The trillionth yeast cell will die soon after mitosis in a pool of alcohol.
  • This is especially concerning due to the ever decreasing levels of public land available. I hunt and participate in wildlife conservation. The North American model of conservation has been the most successful of any other model in the world. Sure, many species suffered before regulations were in place. But, since then we've brought several species (whitetail deer, turkey) from the brink of extinction and from the Pittman-Robertson act the participants contribute to the conservation of wildlife and publi

  • The World Economic Forum says that humans have "modified" 14.6% of earth's land. https://www.weforum.org/agenda... [weforum.org].

    That's a far cry from 75%, which is increasing to...57%??? Something doesn't add up.

  • in the long run, that pesky wildlife doesn't stand a chance.

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