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London: Rising human population, pollution and climate change are threatening to cause the worst spate of wildlife extinctions since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, according to UN studies. About three species an hour may be going extinct, the agency said in a report published on Friday.
The world's wildlife populations have reduced by around a quarter since the 1970s, according to the report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the conservation arm of the United Nations. Marine species have been particularly hard hit as the human population booms, while numbers of birds and, fish and animals have also gone down, said the WWF.
The study comes ahead of this week's UN convention on biological diversity in Bonn, which will discuss aims to achieve a "significant reduction" in the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.
The WWF, the world's largest independent conservation body, said it was "very unlikely" that the UN would meet its targets, despite the decline appearing to flatten off in recent years. A failure to meet the target could threaten future food supplies.
The WWF's Living Planet Index, which tracks the fortunes of nearly 4,000 populations of 1,477 vertebrate species from 1970 to 2005, showed an overall decline of 27 per cent.
Over-fishing and hunting, along with farming, pollution and urban expansion, were blamed for the rapid rate of decline.
Convention Executive Secretary Ahmad Djoghlaf said consumption had reached unsustainable levels and humans were destroying the foundation of life. Without a change in behaviour, feeding up to nine billion people would be difficult. A surge in food prices has highlighted the problem and experts say the loss of plant species could be catastrophic for long-term food supplies.
WWF director general James Leape warned: "Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply.
"No one can escape the impact of biodiversity loss because reduced global diversity translates quite clearly into fewer new medicines, greater vulnerability to natural disasters and greater effects from global warming," he said.
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