Weekly Prompt: Wilderness Lost
What wild place is no more, paved over or ploughed through?
Between 1992 and 2009 the world lost a tenth of its wilderness or 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometres). For some perspective, the entire Amazon rainforest covers an area of just over 2 million square miles.
According to this study published in 2016 there has been an almost 30 percent loss of wilderness in South America and a 10 percent loss globally.
In January 2019, a staggering 121,000 fires had broken out in Brazil, half in the Amazon Basin. Nearly all of these fires were man-made, often deliberately set as part of slash and burn agriculture. Cattle ranching accounts for 80% of Brazil’s deforestation.
If this rate continues, we will have lost all wilderness within the next 50 years.
James Watson, University of Queensland professor and director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society
Loss of wilderness threatens biodiversity, the water and nitrogen cycles as well as pollination. Once the damage is too much, Watson says…
