Across 35,803 population trends covering 5,790 vertebrate species, the average monitored wildlife population in 2022 was 73 percent smaller than in 1970. WWF released that figure on October 7 in its 2026 Living Planet Report, built on the Living Planet Index produced by the Zoological Society of London. The number is an average of change, and WWF is explicit that it does not count animals or populations lost; the report states that the percentage does not represent the number of individual animals lost.
Freshwater populations fell furthest, by 85 percent. WWF also says about half of the monitored populations are stable or increasing, so the top-line average hides a split between sharp collapses and real recoveries, and the report argues that energy, food and finance systems decide which direction the next decades go.
The Living Planet Index method
The Zoological Society of London describes the index as working like a stock market index: it folds thousands of individual trends in mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians into a single cumulative average percentage change. Some populations fell far more than 73 percent and others fell less or rose. ZSL calls it “not a census of all wildlife,” since it only covers populations that someone monitored, using data from journals, online databases and government reports.
That is why WWF’s release carries a caution about comparisons. Since the 2024 edition, 967 populations and 295 species have been added and the time series is longer, so successive editions are not directly comparable. The 2024 edition, the 15th, tracked almost 35,000 trends across 5,495 species and also landed on 73 percent, for 1970 to 2020, as its own explainer page lays out; the 2026 report page says the overall percentage is consistent with it.
Freshwater, regions and the uneven decline
Freshwater populations fell furthest, at 85 percent, followed by terrestrial populations at 69 percent and marine populations at 59 percent, according to WWF. The release also breaks the decline out by region: 95 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 80 percent in Africa, 49 percent in Asia-Pacific, 28 percent in North America and 23 percent in Europe and Central Asia.
WWF attributes the smaller drops in North America and Europe to large-scale impacts that were already underway before 1970, which means the baseline year already sits after much of the damage there. The report treats these as symptoms of systemic failures in food, energy and finance. Habitat loss and degradation are the most frequently reported threats, followed by overexploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive species and disease.
Recoveries sitting inside the average
The same data set contains reversals. Roughly half of monitored populations are stable, at 7 percent, or increasing, at 43 percent. Declines are larger in magnitude than the increases, which is what drags the average down. WWF points to tigers, southern African elephants, green sea turtles and Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tuna as recoveries. ZSL’s index page says wild tigers rose from about 3,200 in 2010 to about 5,700 in 2025, and that the green sea turtle was downlisted from Endangered to Least Concern in 2025. Smithsonian reported that the IUCN shared the change on October 10, 2025, at its World Conservation Congress in the United Arab Emirates, and that some subpopulations, including those in the North Indian Ocean and East Pacific, remain threatened. Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist, said of the recoveries: “That makes recovery more than a hope. It’s a documented, repeatable outcome of sustained action.”
Energy, food and finance as the levers
The report ties the losses to systems more than to single species. Carter Roberts, president and chief executive of WWF in the United States, said nature loss is large but so is society’s capacity to reverse it, and called for changes in how food is produced, power is generated and investment is directed.
WWF cites University of Exeter research on positive tipping points. Energy, it says, has already passed one, since solar is now the cheapest source of new electricity in most countries, though the transition is uneven. Food and agriculture show early signs of approaching one, and finance is still at an early stage, with a call to close an annual $942 billion biodiversity finance gap. WWF adds that conservation alone cannot reverse the declines and that wins will not last without addressing those drivers, a position that frames the 73 percent as the product of how economies are run and not only of pressure on individual habitats or species.
The release points to UN biodiversity and climate conferences within about two months as the test of whether governments move from commitments to implementation. WWF publishes the report every two years, so the next edition would fall in 2028.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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