Animal Populations Fell by 68% in 50 Years and It’s Getting Worse

I live in Minnesota. I used to take trips in high school to the boundary waters area. The water was so clean, you didn't need a filter, you could drink right out of the lake. We didn't have to carry a ton of water, we just had cups that hung on the inside of our canoes. Thirsty? Just dip your cup and have a drink.

Nighttime was always an adventure. The bears and other animals out there were always vocal and nighttime is when a lot of animals came out and hunted. There were always an abundance of birds as well during the daytime. Hawks, bald eagles, falcons.

I've gone back through college and after college in the early 2000's. Everything has changed. Now we have a TON of ugly cell towers because people can't spend 5 min away from their phones. Less birds, the nights are a lot quieter, there didn't seem as many bears as I remember, and the nights have this eerie quiet to them.

Never mind now you have to haul in your own water, or bring a decent filter to filter the water now because its so polluted and not safe to drink. It used to be crystal clear, now its just mucky mud filth.

The other depressing thing is the trash. It was hammered into my brain when I was young the idea of "leave no trace" all through high school by my guides and in college all my roommates who were loyal to the idea. We took it on ourselves to self police each other. You leave a wrapper, a beer can? We all got on each other. It almost became a game, but it also taught us the importance of leaving an area as prestige as you found it. The last two times I was in the Boundary Waters (2008, 2014), I spent a LOT of time picking up others trash - beer cans, plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, you name it, I picked it up. There were two articles recently in the local paper saying it was getting worse now too.

I'm not sure if its a generational thing, people just don't care anymore or I've grown older and have no patience for people leaving their campsites a mess when they leave. Either way, the changes over the past decade have soured my attitude on going there anytime soon.

Yet, clearly, the statistics in this article and elsewhere show that this is plainly not the case. We are killing off wildlife at an unprecedented speed.

Why the disconnect? Are all our efforts really directed towards feel-good efforts at home, maybe, which make the world look cleaner and better for nature, while obscuring the huge amount of invisible damage we're doing?

...but the outer suburban areas and rural areas have far less wildlife because they are so much more developed than they used to be. There has been some recovery of species in those areas too because many species were widely hunted at the turn of the 20th century and populations have rebounded but that mostly only effects the big visible species.

the whole fake police precinct full of androids thing was probably also better removed from a cinematic standpoint.

on edit: at any rate we should probably take into account that Phil Dick seemed to appreciate the movie https://screencrush.com/philip-k-dick-blade-runner/