Again, food production is the biggest pressure on the world’s wildlife.20 It always has been. From overhunting animals for food and claiming their habitats for farmland, to killing off ecosystems with pesticides and fertilisers, the largest threat to the world’s animals is human demand for food. Worried about water pollution? You guessed it: farming comes out on top. When we put nutrients in our soils and crops, most of them run off the land and into rivers, lakes and the ocean. These nutrients throw ecosystems into havoc: species such as algae take advantage and bloom everywhere. Fish and
...more