The Decline Of Wilderness And Wildlife, The Rise Of The Worst In Humanity

                                             There is a ten per cent decline in wilderness areas since the 1990's, according to recent news articles. One scientist is quoted as declaring this to be catastrophic. Another scientist asserted that what is lost can never be replaced.
                                              Anyone that has been traveling the past twenty years, paying attention to wilderness areas, would easily have witnessed this decline. But is it ten per cent or is it more? The articles said the decline is 30 per cent in the Amazon and 14 per cent in the Congo. Other wilderness losses are supposedly higher or lower, with everything averaging out to ten per cent. I could not find anything referencing how they reached these conclusions. Maybe it was by satellite images showing forest loss. I have been in rainforests where the trees are still standing, but virtually everything that cannot fly has been wiped out. I do not think the loss in the Congo stands at only 14 per cent. Even if the trees are still standing, the thousands of people daily hunting, trapping, eating everything alive they can capture or kill, including primates, have ensured that the devastation to the Congo does not stand at a mere 14 per cent. And this is to say nothing of mining interests and how they poison the land and waters, even if trees in the surrounding areas are still standing.                                          
                                               A 30 per cent loss in the Amazon is disastrous. The Amazon is one of the lungs of the planet, and like the Congo and other tropical rainforests, it is one of the richest places in biodiversity. Other rainforests, important sources of biodiversity and more, in southeast Asia and elsewhere, are rapidly being destroyed. The Philippines, once covered in rainforest, has lost over 95 per cent of its forests, and what little is left, rather than being aggressively protected, is still being destroyed. Borneo, home to the orangutan, was a place where it was said an orangutan could go from one side of the large island to the other without ever touching the ground. Now the small amount of pristine forest that remains is still being destroyed. What was once vast rainforest is now mostly palm plantations (palm oil, the main product of the palm tree, contributes to heart disease).
                                                 If seven billion humans have caused this much damage, in which vast forest cover, mangroves, coral reefs, wildlife, sea grasses, marine life,  unpolluted rivers, waters and lands, are lost forever, how much worse will it be when soon there will be over ten billion of us?
                                                 Instead of waking up to how damaged is the world, and doing what we can to prevent further damage, we have instead a toxic mix of greed, selfishness and violence that will keep the damage going.
                                                   As nature and wilderness declines, a number of opportunistic organizations that have presented themselves as the answer to conservation, to wildlife protection, and even to animal cruelty and suffering, will continue exploiting these issues for their own gain. Their coffers have grown exponentially as animal suffering has exploded, and as wilderness and wildlife continues its steep decline. Greed and selfishness is not limited to those who in the pursuit of money do not care what is harmed.
                                                   Even worse than the vast numbers of people who are dismissive of the natural world or treat it like a sewer, are the vast numbers of people that believe they have no obligations to this world other than to kill in the name of their religion.  While the world is awash in a wave of killing in the name of religion, others excuse, justify, condone or ignore the violence, which makes it much worse. God and killing should never go together, but in this twisted, greedy, violent world, they do.
                                                   In the future, with deranged regimes and organizations chasing after nuclear weapons, with humanity destroying, exploiting, and failing to come to its senses, life will be very hard indeed for those humans living in a depleted, overcrowded world devoid of wilderness and compassion, but abundant with hate filled religious fanatics eager to kill on behalf of their demented perception of God.