"The world's last remaining wilderness areas are rapidly disappearing, a report warns.
'A century ago, only 15 percent of the Earth's surface was used by humans to grow crops and raise livestock,' lead author James Watson said. 'Today, more than 77 percent of land – excluding Antarctica – has been modified by human activities,' said Watson, a scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia.
The study, which was was published Wednesday in the British journal Nature. also said that about '87 percent of the ocean has been modified by the direct effects of human activities.'
Incredibly, from 1993 to 2009, an area of terrestrial wilderness almost five times as big as the state of Texas – about 1.2 million square miles – was lost to human settlement, farming, mining and other pressures, the report noted."
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