Ecologists and environmental advocates on Thursday called for swift action to reintroduce species into the wild as scientists at the University of Cambridge in England found that 97% of the planet’s land area no longer qualifies as ecologically intact.

“Conservation is simply not enough anymore,” said financier and activist Ben Goldsmith. “We need restoration.”

The authors of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, expressed alarm at their findings, which showed that of the 3% of fully intact land, much lies in northern areas which weren’t rich in biodiversity to begin with, such as boreal forests in Canada or tundra in Greenland. 

The amount of ecologically intact land “was much lower than we were expecting,” Dr. Andrew Plumptre, head of the Key Biodiversity Areas Secretariat at Cambridge and lead author of the study, told Science News. 

“Going in, I’d guessed that it would be 8 to 10%,” he added. “It just shows how huge an impact we’ve had.”

The researchers examined whether natural habitats had retained the number of species which were present in the year 1500—the standard used by […]