Wildlife
Wildlife:WhatFarmingCoststheWild
The biggest threat to wild animals on earth is not poaching, plastic, or climate change in isolation. It is the land, water, and feed we use to raise the animals we eat.
Land
The Largest Land Use on Earth
A landmark 2018 PNAS study by Bar-On, Phillips and Milo found that of all mammalian biomass on earth, 60% is livestock, 36% is humans, and only 4% is wild mammals. For birds, 70% of all bird biomass is poultry. The wild world has been pushed to the margins of the planet not primarily by hunting or pollution, but by the agricultural footprint of meat and dairy.
The expansion of pasture, soy for animal feed, and palm-oil for cheap fat continues to be the single largest driver of tropical deforestation, the leading cause of recent species extinctions, and the dominant pressure on freshwater ecosystems.
When we talk about being good to animals, we usually mean the ones we farm. But the largest population of animals affected by our food system is the wild one — and they are affected by what we leave for them to live in.
Deforestation
Where the Rainforest Goes
The Amazon has lost roughly 20% of its original forest cover. About 80% of that loss is direct cattle ranching, and most of the remainder is soy — the great majority of which is fed to livestock, not eaten by humans. The Cerrado, the Pantanal, the Atlantic Forest, and the Gran Chaco are being lost on the same trajectory and for the same reasons.
When a forest is cleared, every dependent species — jaguars, sloths, macaws, capuchin monkeys, anteaters — loses habitat permanently. Forests do not recover within the lifetime of the species displaced.
Sixty percent of mammals on earth are now livestock. Four percent are wild.
Oceans
Empty Seas, Dead Zones, Drowned Habitats
Industrial fishing has restructured ocean ecosystems globally: trawl scars, collapsed predator populations (sharks, tuna, swordfish), and bycatch deaths in the hundreds of thousands per year for dolphins, turtles, seals and seabirds. On land, the runoff from livestock manure and feed-crop fertilizer is the largest single cause of coastal dead zones — including the Gulf of Mexico's annually returning low-oxygen zone the size of a small country.
Wildlife conservation in the 21st century is, more than anything, a food question.
Wildlife
Give the wild back its land — one meal at a time.
When we talk about being good to animals, we usually mean the ones we farm. But the largest population of animals affected by our food system is the wild one — and they are affected by what we leave for them to live in.
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