少吃肉还能保护环境?以后要多吃素!
Efforts to preserve nature are way off what is required, a report has warned. Populations of mammals, birds, reptiles , amphibians and fish have fallen off a cliff – dropping by 60 per cent in just over 40 years. “Right now the destruction of nature is seen as the price of development, and we cannot continue like that,” Tony Juniper, WWF’s executive director said. Familiar British animals like puffins and hedgehogs joined more exotic species like elephants, rhinos and polar bears on the list of species that have dropped in numbers massively between 1970 and 2014. These declines have been particularly pronounced in tropical regions and freshwater habitats. Just a quarter of the planet's surface is free from human activity, and this is expected to shrink to a tenth by 2050. This habitat loss, combined with poaching, pollution and climate change, have all contributed to a crisis that experts think can no longer be handled using conventional tactics. An explosion of human activity, including overfishing, deforestation and pesticide use, has been at the heart of many species' declines. Mr Juniper noted that there is a role for individual action to protect animals, singling out changing attitudes to food as a key strategy. “The biggest single thing most of us can do is cut down our meat consumption,” he said. |