Global Analysis Finds Nearly Half The Earth Is Still Wilderness

The 37 wilderness areas identified in the book represent 46 percent of the Earth's land surface, but are occupied by just 2.4 percent of the world's population, excluding urban centers. Nine of the wilderness areas fall, at least in part, within the United States.

Although the wilderness areas are still largely intact, they are increasingly threatened by population growth, encroaching agriculture and resource extraction activities. Barely 7 percent of the areas currently enjoy some form of protection.

Nineteen of the wilderness areas have remarkably low population densities – an average of less than one person per square kilometer. Excluding urban centers, these 19 areas represent 38 percent of the Earth's land surface, but hold only 0.7 percent of the planet's population.

"These very low density areas represent a landmass equivalent to the six largest countries on Earth combined – Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Brazil and Australia – but have within them the population of only three large cities, a truly remarkable finding," said co-author Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International. "It's good news that we still have these large tracts of land largely intact and uninhabited, but these areas are increasingly under threat."

The large-format, 576-page book depicts rare species and remarkable places in more than 500 breathtaking color photographs that accompany detailed information regarding the habitat, species and cultural diversity of each wilderness area. The analysis was mainly carried out over the past two years by Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science with support from the Global Conservation Fund.

The wilderness areas include several diverse habitats, ranging from Southern Africa's Miombo-Mopane Woodlands, with the world's largest remaining population of African elephants, to the Sonoran and Baja Californian Deserts of Arizona, California and Mexico, with their Gila woodpeckers and giant cacti, to Amazonia's rainforests, teeming with biodiversity including 30,000 endemic plant species and 122 endemic primate species and subspecies.

To qualify as "wilderness," an area has 70 percent or more of its original vegetation intact, covers at least 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) and most have fewer than five people per square kilometer.

"Wilderness areas are major storehouses of biodiversity, but just as importantly, they provide critical ecosystem services to the planet, including watershed maintenance, pollination and carbon sequestration," said Gustavo Fonseca, Executive Director of CI's Center