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Is the Earth running out of room for both people and wildlife?

A recent study from Conservation International (click here) suggests there is still plenty of room on planet Earth for both man and beast. In its report entitled Wilderness: Earth’s Last Wild Places, the study’s look at 37 Wilderness Areas

These include habitats on every continent, ranging from the Amazon rainforest, teeming with more than 30,000 endemic plant species, to the barren deserts of the Sahara. Only areas greater than 10,000 km2 with at least 70 percent of their original vegetation intact qualified. In most cases, they have less than five people per square kilometer.

Since the dawn of man, they covered roughly 54 percent of the Earth’s surface. Present day coverage is at 46 percent.  They are occupied by only 2.4 percent of the world’s population.

The intact wilderness sites on the planet occupy a land area equivalent to the six largest countries on Earth combined; or more than seven times the size of the U.S.

The largest is the Boreal Forest of North America and Asia.  

Tropical rainforests of the Amazon and the Congo remain largely intact.

Seven-tenths of the world’s population was in just 38 percent of the Earth’s land area, with a virtual absence of human populations in wilderness areas.

As reported in CNS news, “A lot of people will be surprised by the percent of the land surface that is in very good shape. We were surprised!” said Russ Mittermeier, the President of CI.

Here’s the map of the world’s remaining wilderness areas. 

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Last modified: February 11, 2006