THE Living Planet report of the Worldwide Wildlife Fund (WWF) says that over the past 45 years the global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles, all vertebrates, have declined by 58 percent.

The WWF researchers say that this figure is likely to rise to 67 percent by 2020 unless something drastic is done.

The researchers have calculated that the rate of species extinction is now about 100 times its natural level.

The pressures now facing the earth’s wildlife are deforestation, pollution, hunting and over fishing, and climate change.

To qualify as a mass extinction two-thirds of a species has to disappear entirely, and that is already happening.

Some experts on the subject believe we are losing up to 100 species of flora and fauna a day, gone forever.

The biggest problem of course is human over population.

It has been reliably calculated that the first population explosion occurred when humans began to urbanise – they had invented cities.

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At around this time, 9000 years before the present, the total human population was an estimated 9-million.

By the 15th and 16th centuries, when Europeans began exploring in their little ships, the population was 450-million.

The population clock was ticking: by 1830 we hit the first billion, then 1.6-billion by the end of the 19th century, and today, a little over a hundred years later, the world’s human population is over 7-billion.

The very basic needs of 7-billion people for shelter, medicines, food, land and energy to drive it all, mainly electrical power and fossil fuels, is causing the expansion of the human footprint on the earth and the concomitant loss of species of both fauna and flora.

It’s a grim picture and gives us much to ponder.*

But let’s end on a positive note. Scientists based in the United States of America are reported to be on the brink of a breakthrough as far as a vaccine against malaria is concerned.

It’s reported that in clinical trials in Germany the vaccine was 100 percent effective, although similar trials conducted in Mali were less successful.

The work continues and if the vaccine is given the go-ahead it could be commercially available in perhaps two years.

There were 212 million cases of malaria reported worldwide in 2015, and 429,000 deaths, 90 percent of those in Africa.**

And if you are wondering about mosquitos in Germany, I can assure you that some of the most bloodthirsty mosquitos I have ever encountered were in Germany and Switzerland.

*The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media, and personal research.

**The Daily Maverick.

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