What We Have Done?

From Damian Carrington, an environmental editor at the Guardian, some facts on life on Earth.

To start, the human race is just 0.01% of all life but has destroyed over 80% of wild mammals.

Bacteria are a major life form – 13% of everything – but plants dominate, with 82% of all living matter. All other creatures, from insects to fungi, fish to animals, make up just 5% of the world’s biomass.


60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals. Farmed poultry makes up 70% of all birds on the planet, with just 30% being wild.



Since the rise of human civilisation, 83% of wild land mammals, 80% of marine mammals and 50% of plants have been lost.


Viruses alone have a combined weight three times that of humans, as do worms. Fish are 12 times greater than people and athropods (insects, spiders, crustaceans) 17 time more. Bacteria outweigh humans by 1200 times.

Oh, and life in the oceans turns out to represent just 1% of all biomass. The vast majority of life is land-based and a large chunk – an eighth – is bacteria buried deep below the surface.

The full article can be found here.