World species dying out like flies says WWF

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - World biodiversity has declined by almost one third in the past 35 years due mainly to habitat loss and the wildlife trade, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said on Friday

It warned that climate change would add increasingly to the wildlife woes over the next three decades.

"Biodiversity underpins the health of the planet and has a direct impact on all our lives so it is alarming that despite of an increased awareness of environmental issues we continue to see a downtrend trend," said WWF campaign head Colin Butfield.

"However, there are small signs for hope and if government grasps what is left of this rapidly closing window of opportunity, we can begin to reverse this trend."

WWF's Living Planet Index tracks some 4,000 species of birds, fish, mammals, reptiles and amphibians globally. It shows that between 1970 and 2007 land-based species fell by 25 percent, marine by 28 percent and freshwater by 29 percent.

Marine bird species have fallen 30 percent since the mid-1990s.

The report comes ahead of a meeting in Bonn next week of member states of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity to try to find out how to save the world's flora and fauna under threat from human activities.

Some scientists see the loss of plants, animals and insects as the start of the sixth great species wipe out in the Earth's history, the last being in the age of the dinosaurs which disappeared 130 million years ago.