The world's wilderness is disappearing

The untouched wilderness on this planet is disappearing — and disappearing fast. That's bad news, and not just because trees look nice: we depend on vast swathes of pristine nature to support diverse forms of life, to keep climate change at bay, and to ensure that local economies thrive. But for all their importance, we're doing a pretty bad job ensuring wild places stay wild, new research shows.

"The clock is ticking."

The problem with developing wild places is that ecosystems operate as a whole: cut off parts of it, and who knows what could happen to the rest. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, we've managed to carve away 10 percent of the last untouched places on Earth, according to a study published today in the journal Current Biology....