Wilderness Is No Longer Wild, Studies Show We Need To Increase Protection

New research shows that the wilderness is no longer wild. More protection should be conducted because we are running out of time. Can studies today help restore what was lost?

Experts conducted a survey and reiterated that the wilderness could not take care of itself. Since researchers thought that wilderness is much better to be left alone, for it is somehow difficult to live in, their new study shows that they are wrong. Parts of Siberia and Sahara desert already lost 1.2 million square miles of wild land over the past 20 years. Experts now are saying that these places should be actively protected.

A professor at the University of Northern British Columbia and an author of the study said, "We started with the fairly naive assumption that we wouldn't see very big declines in wilderness areas because of the fact that they were so remote. So we were quite surprised and shocked to the levels at which these areas had been eroded since the early 1990s."

Meanwhile, a team of researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society headed by Venter and James Watson surveys the human footprints in our planet.  With the help of the data gathered by the satellite they were able to identify where people built cities, pave roads, installed power lines, put down railroad tracks and lands being transformed to pastures.

Results show that only 23 percent left of the land across the globe can be considered as "wilderness" or areas with no human activities. It has a ten percent drop down over the past two decades and it concentrates mainly in North America, North Asia, North Africa, and Australia.

In line with this, in the journal "Current Biology" researchers learned that the loss of wilderness areas is a globally significant problem; it is an irreversible outcome for both humans and nature. If this continues there will be no more left in the next century, as reported by Independent UK.

President and chief scientist of the Yellowstone, Jodi Hilty added that "Society needs to come to grips with this challenge: what do we want to protect and when are we going to get at it? The clock is ticking. For many of the most critical ecosystems, another couple of decades of deliberation is going to run out the clock. There just won't be any wilderness left," according to The Verge.