There’s a certain grief that comes not with human tragedy, but with the vanishing of the wild. It’s not a loud grief. It arrives in silence—the kind that follows when birds no longer sing, when forests fall still, when oceans murmur less.
As someone who has long fought for climate justice and ecological preservation, I admit there’s a part of me that flinches when the suffering of animals is placed before me. Perhaps it’s because they play no part in the decisions that destroy their homes, their food chains, their futures. Yet suffer they do. And more often than not, we look away.
But some truths are impossible to ignore. The World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Index recently reported a staggering figure: populations of wild animals have, on average, declined by 69% since 1970. That’s not a typo or an exaggeration. That’s the sound of life itself growing quiet.
A Planet Less Alive
This isn’t about wild creatures overrunning the world in 1970. There wasn’t a surplus of tigers or turtles back then. Instead, it’s about unchecked human consumption, an ever-hungry drive for “more”—more land, more meat, more convenience—consuming the very fabric of the natural world.
We pave over grasslands for shopping centers. We cut down rainforests for burgers. We dredge oceans for fish we barely value. And often, this destruction is invisible, occurring far from the cities where we live, behind closed borders and deeper into the wild with each passing year.
The report reminds us that declining animal populations are more than a tragedy—they’re a warning. These creatures are threads in the web of life. When they vanish, the whole web weakens. Fewer birds mean more pests. Fewer fish mean starving seabirds. Ecosystems unravel, and the impacts ripple back to us.
The Loneliness of a Quiet Earth
But beyond the science, there’s something deeply spiritual about this loss. Something profoundly lonely.
The natural world, with all its color and chaos and choreography, has always been a source of human awe. From the animals painted on cave walls to the eagle feathers in sacred ceremonies, wild creatures have shaped our stories and our souls. Their disappearance is not just a biodiversity crisis—it’s a cultural and emotional one, too.
It feels like we are sailing on a fast-emptying ark. The carnival of life—its vibrant, cacophonous celebration—is fading to silence. We are becoming solitary stewards of a world that once pulsed with so many voices not our own.
The Price of Wanting More
So where did we go wrong? Much of the loss has been driven by habitat destruction—the result of land being cleared for agriculture, industry, and housing. It’s not that individual choices like eating a burger or building a home are inherently evil. But collectively, our desires are enormous. And often, the true cost is paid elsewhere—by a logger in the Amazon forest, a disappearing frog in the Congo, or a dying coral reef in the South Pacific.
Ironically, the regions with the least wildlife loss—North America and Europe—only fared “better” because much of their natural destruction happened earlier. Having already cleared forests and hunted animals to near extinction, the wealthier parts of the world now conserve what remains, often outsourcing the environmental cost of their lifestyles to poorer nations.
Looking ahead, climate change is emerging as the next great driver of biodiversity loss. As oceans warm and acidify, coral reefs—some of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth—are dying. As temperatures rise, animals are pushed to higher elevations and latitudes, until there’s nowhere left to go.
In his book Nowhere Left to Go, Benjamin von Brackel puts it starkly: the closer animals get to the poles, the more their options shrink. Earth, after all, is an ellipsoid—its ends finite.
A Flicker of Hope
Yet hope is not gone. When given space and protection, wildlife can rebound. When two small dams were removed in New England, herring populations soared from mere thousands to millions. Species do not forget how to live—they just need room and time to do it.
The push for renewable energy, though not without its own ecological impact, offers a pathway forward. Yes, solar farms and wind turbines require space—but these projects can be designed with care. Fill solar fields with wildflowers. Build migration corridors through wind farms. Install turbines offshore in ways that shelter marine life.
In short, we can and must find ways to decarbonize without further displacing life.
A Choice Before Us
The WWF report is a siren. We cannot meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals if we allow biodiversity to collapse. But this isn’t just about international policy or environmental metrics.
This is about choosing whether we want to live in a world that still has birdsong, still has foxes in the hedgerows and whales in the deep. A world where our children don’t just read about elephants, butterflies, and coral reefs in history books.
As I write this, Vermont’s autumn is in full bloom. The forest glows gold and crimson. A barred owl hoots in the twilight. A deer meanders across the field. The beauty is overwhelming—and yet, it already feels like a shadow of what once was.
So, let us remember: the ark is not yet empty. There is time, though not much. And the question before us is not whether we love wildlife, but whether we’re willing to make space—for them, and for ourselves—to share this Earth again.
