An alarming new report by a panel of leading scientists warns that human activity is causing the disappearance and deterioration of wildlife at a rate that could represent an existential threat to humanity within our lifetimes. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released its conclusions today and found that 1 million species could go extinct in the foreseeable future unless current trends are reversed. The report will be released in full later this year. This is the chair of the U.N. panel, Sir Robert Watson.

Robert Watson: “We’re losing species at a historical rate. Potentially 500,000 to a million species are threatened with loss. We have lost much of our native forests, much of our native wetlands. And effectively, biodiversity needs to be considered as an equally important issue as climate change. It’s not just an environmental issue; it is an economic issue, a development issue, a security issue, a social, moral and ethical issue.”