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Some claim that rainforests are being destroyed at an ever-quickening pace. [48] The London-based Rainforest Foundation notes that "the UN figure is based on a definition of forest as being an area with as little as 10% actual tree cover, which would therefore include areas that are actually savanna-like ecosystems and badly damaged forests". [49]
More than 50% of wetlands in the U.S. have been destroyed in just the last 200 years. [8] Between 60% and 70% of European wetlands have been completely destroyed. [13] In the United Kingdom, there has been an increase in demand for coastal housing and tourism which has caused a decline in marine habitats over the last 60 years.
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is the most dramatic example of a massive, continuous ecosystem and a biodiversity hotspot being under the immediate threat from habitat destruction through logging, and the less-visible, yet ever-growing and persistent threat from climate change. [11] [12]
For the 300 years following the arrival of Europeans, land was cleared, mostly for agriculture, at a rate that matched that of population growth. [7] During the 19th century, while the U.S. population tripled, the total area of cropland increased by over four times, from seventy-six million to three hundred nineteen million acres.
Since then, the term has gained broader usage in conservation biology as a global phenomenon. [4] [9] It is estimated that more than 50 percent of all wildlife has been lost in the last 40 years. [10] In 2016, it was estimated that by 2020, 68% of the world's wildlife would be lost. [11] In South America, there is believed to be a 70 percent ...
In rare cases, a conservation reliant species may gain some measure of disease protection by being distributed in isolated habitats, and when controlled for overall habitat loss some studies have shown a positive relationship between species richness and fragmentation; this phenomenon has been called the habitat amount hypothesis, though the ...
One of the world's largest and most dense rainforests is the Amazon rainforest in South America. Rainforests are disappearing across the world, and at an alarming rate in Brazil. Since the 1980s, more than 153,000 square miles of Amazonian rainforest has fallen victim to deforestation. [6]
Updated 2022 estimates show that even at a global average increase of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) over pre-industrial temperatures, only 0.2% of the world's coral reefs would still be able to withstand marine heatwaves, as opposed to 84% being able to do so now, with the figure dropping to 0% at 2 °C (3.6 °F) warming and beyond.