Human Movement Dwarfs Wildlife by Factor of 40, Study Reveals
JERUSALEM | Xinhua | An international research team has determined that the total movement of humanity is 40 times greater than the combined movement of all wild land mammals, birds, and insects, according to a statement from the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) on Monday.
Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the study details a staggering 4,000 percent increase in human movement since the Industrial Revolution roughly 170 years ago. Over the same period, the movement of marine animals has plummeted by approximately 60 percent.
Scientists warn that this global decline in animal movement is a critical indicator of an ecosystem under severe stress, as travel is essential for animals to find food, escape predators, and connect different habitats.
The researchers developed a novel metric combining a species’ total biomass with the distance it travels annually. Using this measure, they found that human movement on foot alone is six times greater than the total movement of all wild land mammals, birds, and arthropods.
The study notes that most human travel occurs via car or motorbike, followed by air travel, walking, and cycling, with the average person covering about 30 km per day. The researchers highlighted that the energy consumption of a single airline rivals the total annual energy expended in flight by all of the world’s wild birds.
A related study from WIS, published in Nature Communications, found that the combined weight of wild land and marine mammals has collapsed by about 70 percent since 1850, falling from 200 million tonnes to just 60 million tonnes.
In stark contrast, the biomass of humans has surged by about 700 percent, while that of livestock has grown by 400 percent. Today, people and their farm animals constitute a combined mass of about 1.1 billion tonnes, starkly illustrating humanity’s expansion alongside wildlife’s decline.
The research underscores the profound extent of human dominance over the natural world and the immense challenge of reversing the damage inflicted on global ecosystems. In a particularly stark finding, the biomass of marine mammals has been reduced to just 30 percent of its 1850 level, largely due to industrial hunting. ■
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