There has been a 69 per cent decline in the wildlife populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, across the globe in the last 50 years, according to the latest Living Planet Report by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

WWF identified six key threats to biodiversity — agriculture, hunting, logging, pollution, invasive species and climate change — to highlight ‘threat hotspots’ for terrestrial vertebrates. A nature-positive future needs transformative, game-changing shifts in how we produce, how we consume, how we govern and what we finance,” mentioned in the report. It is clear that unless we stop treating these emergencies as two separate issues, neither problem will be addressed effectively.

The Living Planet Index (LPI), featuring about 32,000 populations of 5,230 species across the world, showed that vertebrate wildlife populations are plummeting at a particularly staggering rate in tropical regions of the world. Mangroves continue to be lost to aquaculture, agriculture and coastal development at a rate of 0.13 per cent per year, according to the findings.