General Wildlife:
- Approximately 30,000 species per year — about three per hour — are being driven to extinction.
- Hawaii makes up less than .2% of land in the United States, but over 25% of the species found on the nation’s endangered species list are endemic to Hawaii, making Hawaii (one of) the “endangered species capital of the world.”
- Approximately 80 percent of the decline in global biological diversity is caused by habitat destruction.
- The population of wildlife throughout the world decreased in size by approximately 52 percent between 1970 and 2010. The human population more than doubled in size during the period.
- Four percent of the mammals in the world are wild animals. Thirty-six percent are human beings and 60 percent are farm animals.
- Illegal wildlife trafficking throughout the world brings in approximately US $20 billion per year.
- Every year poachers take more than 38 million animals from the wilds of Brazil to meet the global demand for illegal wildlife. Most are birds destined to become caged pets for people in Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Madrid or New York.
- The marine vertebrate population decreased in size by approximately 49 percent between 1970 and 2012.
- More than 650,000 marine mammals are killed or seriously injured every year throughout the world as a result of accidental entanglement or capture in fishing gear. In many cases the gear is fishing line that has simply been abandoned.
- More than 100 million animals are reported killed by hunters in the United States each year. That number does not include the millions of animals for which kill figures are not maintained by state wildlife agencies.
- Every year in the United States more than 4,000 tons of lead are shot into the environment by hunters. This results in the poisoning deaths of approximately 20 million animals.
- More than 126,000 hunting trophies are imported into the United States each year.
- Thousands of individuals are arrested for poaching in the United States each year. However, experts believe that only between one and five percent of poachers are caught.