Wildlife and plantlife on the brink: World’s last male northern white rhino is dead: Animal populations set to plummet by 67% between 1970 and 2020

Sudan: The world’s last male northern white rhino Credit YouTube
The world’s last male northern white rhino has died, the Kenyan conservancy taking care of it said, leaving only two females of its subspecies alive in the world.
It's another blow for Earth's biodiversity and last Saturday, a comprehensive, global appraisal of the damage, and what can be done to reverse the free-fall die-off of animal, fish and plant species around the world, will be conducted in Colombia.
In just three years’ time, the World will have lost two-thirds of all wild animals.
This amazing statistic from The Living Planet Index goes on: The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.
The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.
According to The Daily Mail, there are an estimated 8.7 million plant and animal species on our planet and about 86 percent of land species and 91 percent of sea species remain undiscovered.
Of the ones we do know, 1,204 mammals, 1,469 bird, 1,215 reptiles, 2,100 amphibia, and 2,386 fish species are considered threatened.
Also threatened are 1,414 insects, 2,187 molluscs, 732 crustacea, 237 coral, 12,505 plant, 33 mushrooms, and six brown algae species.
Two species of vertebrate, animals with a backbone, have gone extinct every year, on average, for the past century.
Currently, around 41 percent of amphibian species and more than a quarter of mammals are threatened with extinction.
According to Reuters, the last surviving male northern white rhino named 'Sudan' was being treated for age-related complications that had affected his muscles and bones and also gave him extensive skin wounds.
The rhino had spent two weeks in late February and early March lying in his pen due to discomfort from a deep wound on his right hind leg.

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