Half of Earth's animal population wiped out by humans in less than 50 years

Scientists issue stark warning for Earth's sixth "mass extinction event."

The last time a mass extinction took place on our planet, it wiped out the dinosaurs as well as many flowering plant species.

Scientists now believe all life, and human civilisation in particular, is undergoing another mass extinction event.

There are now less than half the animals on the planet - 50 per cent of all individual animals have been lost in recent decades.

A study last year showed that billions of regional and local animal populations have been lost, and not just for endangered species. The ranges of unprotected animals have been significantly curtailed by human development.

The academic research also discovered species are becoming extinct at a rapidly increasing rate than for the millions of year before.


The paper calls the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” representing a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation.”

Dominic Waughray, Director and Head of Environmental Initiatives at the World Economic Forum, appeared on Radio 4's Today programme this morning to discuss efforts to remedy the mass extinction.

He advocated mapping the planet's genome. It means scientifically analysing the DNA of every single living organism on Earth.

Waughray said: "It's very sobering, it's one of the things we've introduced to Davos this week.

"Consider this statistic, those born since 2012 have inherited a planet with fewer than half the number of animals, on land and those underwater, than those born before 1970.

"Startling, it's the sixth great extinction, scientists are calling it. The trouble is it's not just a moral issue, but there are really serious natural systems that could be under threat if we wipe out so many species."

The other mass extinction events to have taken place so far are the Ordovician-Silurian, late Devonian, Permian and Triassic-Jurassic.