Vertebrate declines are worse than the Living Planet Report suggests

Vertebrate declines are worse than the Living Planet Report suggests Background/Question/Methods

The Living Planet Report summarizes trends of thousands of wildlife populations globally, portraying severe declines of wildlife populations, and its conclusions have been used to direct conservation efforts. Some studies accepted the report’s findings at face value, while some considered it to be overly pessimistic. We examine biases in the Living planet Report dataset with respect to external indicators of species extinction risk, comparing the species included in the dataset to those precluded from it. We show that this dataset is heavily biased towards populations of species that are doing better than unrepresented ones, and thus portrays an overly optimistic picture of the state of nature

Results/Conclusions

When compared to unrepresented species, species represented in the Living Planet Report, have larger ranges, that overlap more with protected areas. Moreover, the populations in the dataset are more likely to be sampled inside protected areas than expected by chance. Species represented in the Living Planet Report are more likely to be categorized by the IUCN as non-threatened, and less likely to be categorized as threatened. Their populations are more likely to be stable or increasing, while populations of unrepresented species are more likely to be decreasing. Overall the Living Planet Report dataset is further biased towards less threatened taxa and geographical regions. Caution should be taken when generalizing about biased data, as such results could be used to undercut conservation efforts. The biases we highlight show that nature's status is worse than depicted in the Living Planet Report. Rather than discouraging efforts such as the Living Planet Report, we use this opportunity as a call to arms for greater, better, monitoring of populations of diverse groups globally.