By Monica Kayombo/Zambia, Lusaka,
AFRICA has recorded an average 80 percent decline in the size of monitored vertebrate wildlife populations between 1970 and 2022, according to the WWF Living Planet Report 2026.
The report says the sharp decline highlights the severe pressure on nature across the continent, but also shows that wildlife recovery is possible where conservation is sustained, communities have a direct stake in protecting natural resources and the wider systems driving nature loss are transformed.
The Living Planet Index (LPI), produced by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), draws on almost 35,803 population trends covering 5,790 vertebrate species worldwide.
WWF has cautioned that the 80 percent figure does not mean Africa has lost 80 percent of all individual wild animals or 80 percent of its wildlife species.
Instead, it represents the cumulative average proportional change in the size of monitored animal populations at sites across the region.
Globally, the report recorded a 73 percent decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations over the 52-year period.
Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the steepest decline at 95 percent, followed by Africa at 80 percent and Asia-Pacific at 49 percent.
North America recorded a 28 percent decline, while Europe and Central Asia recorded a 23 percent decline.
WWF says habitat loss and degradation remain the most frequently reported threats affecting monitored wildlife populations, followed by overexploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive species and disease.
The report says these pressures are driven by wider failures in food, energy and financial systems.
Despite the overall negative trend, about half of the populations included in the global Living Planet Index are stable or increasing.
The report highlights recoveries involving green turtles, bluefin tuna, tigers and some populations of southern African elephants as evidence that clear conservation goals, adaptable plans, sustained action and long-term resilience can produce measurable results.
WWF Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Yvonne Godo said wildlife recovery must benefit both people and nature.
“Recovery is possible, but it must work for people as well as wildlife. Wildlife recovery is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of a new responsibility,” Ms Godo said.
She said the key challenge was to create a future in which people and wildlife could thrive together.
The report says African savannah elephants continue to decline across much of their range and remain Endangered overall.
However, some populations in southern Africa are increasing in areas where legal frameworks give local communities a direct stake in managing the land and wildlife they share.
WWF says these gains took decades and were reinforced by anti-trafficking measures, judicial reforms and efforts to reduce corruption.
The findings are relevant to Zambia, which forms part of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), one of Africa’s major transboundary wildlife landscapes and an important elephant range.
The wider KAZA landscape supports a significant population of African savannah elephants, while Zambia continues to face pressures including habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, poaching and other forms of pressure on wildlife and natural habitats.
The experience of southern African elephant populations highlighted in the WWF report underscores the importance of conservation approaches that involve communities living alongside wildlife.
The report also warns of increasing pressure on the Congo Basin, home to forest elephants, great apes, bonobos and okapis.
Agricultural expansion, logging, mining, roads and other infrastructure are opening up and fragmenting forests, while unsustainable hunting and poaching are further depleting wildlife populations.
WWF wildlife inventory reports indicate that African forest elephant numbers have fallen by more than 60 percent over recent decades, largely because of illegal killing for ivory and habitat loss.
The decline threatens not only wildlife but also forest regeneration, ecosystem services and carbon storage.
WWF Regional Director for the Congo Basin Nadège Nzoyem said reversing the trend would require coordinated action across governments, civil society and other sectors.
“Durable conservation depends on communities, traditional leaders and institutions having the authority, responsibility and tangible benefits needed to safeguard nature,” Ms Nzoyem said.
The Living Planet Report cautions that encouraging wildlife recoveries should accelerate action rather than create complacency.
WWF says conservation interventions alone cannot reverse biodiversity loss while underlying economic systems continue to destroy habitats and intensify climate change.
The report identifies food production as the leading cause of habitat destruction, while fossil-fuel-based energy drives climate change and financial flows continue to support activities that harm nature.
Research by the University of Exeter included in the report suggests that large and complex systems can shift rapidly after crossing a threshold into a healthier state, with positive changes becoming self-reinforcing and potentially faster, cheaper and harder to reverse.
In food and agriculture, WWF says positive change is already being driven by nature-positive production, more sustainable trade and consumption, healthier diets and efforts to reduce food loss and waste.
The organisation says these changes need to be rapidly scaled up while protecting livelihoods and food security.
The financial system, meanwhile, remains at an early stage of change and must stop financing activities that harm nature, recognise nature and climate as material risks and provide regulatory certainty.
WWF says the financial sector also needs to help close the estimated US$942 billion annual biodiversity finance gap.
WWF says countries can accelerate the transition by implementing commitments already agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Paris Agreement.
With United Nations biodiversity and climate conferences approaching, the organisation says governments have an opportunity to move from ambition to implementation.
WWF Africa Head of Policy and Partnerships Durrel Halleson said the report was both a warning and a mandate for action.
“As African countries head into Biodiversity COP17 and Climate COP31, and prepare to host COP32 in Addis Ababa, they must advance a coherent agenda that connects biodiversity, climate, land and development priorities,” Mr Halleson said.
He called for existing commitments to be translated into implementation through adequate and accessible finance, stronger policy alignment and locally led action.
The report says biodiversity underpins Africa’s economies and societies by providing food, water, clean air, medicine and resilience to climate shocks.
It warns that transforming the food, energy and financial systems that drive nature loss will be essential if Africa and the wider world are to reverse biodiversity decline at the scale required.
