Nine Animals That Vanished During Our Lifetime

From a Maine man delivering a baby porcupine on the road to Indian villagers pulling up a 400-pound lion that had stumbled down a well, many humans came through for wildlife in 2014. (Bless the Internet for making these heroic actions available for our viewing pleasure.) But besides the awe-inspiring videos also came dire reports about the state of animals.  Bees continued to die by the millions, thanks to decades of pesticide use. The number of poachers targeting giraffes—not just elephants—climbed. The World Wildlife Fund reported in September that the planet has lost 53 percent of its mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, and fish since 1970.

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We're The Reason World Has Lost Half of Its Wildlife

The world’s population of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish has plummeted 53 percent since 1970, according to a World Wildlife Fund report released on Tuesday.  “Population sizes of vertebrate species have halved over the last 40 years,” the report said. “The state of the world’s biodiversity appears worse than ever.” During the same time, the world's human population has doubled, it noted.  The study used a Living Planet Index to measure more than 10,000 populations of the world’s vertebrates.

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Video: Heart-Stopping Rescue of Two Sea Turtles

The sight of two suffocating turtles, on their backs with fins tied up, horrified tourists on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua. Thanks to their quick thinking, the animals were returned safely to sea.  A video posted on YouTube Monday shows tourists rescuing two loggerhead turtles, each weighing about 250 pounds. Chris Skone-Roberts, a professional rescue diver and former paramedic, first spotted the reptiles. When he tried to douse them with water, a woman angrily pulled him off—claiming they were hers. It’s presumed that once the turtles suffocated to death, she would have sold their meat on the black market.

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