Land use data offers one of the most tangible ways to understand the relationship between population growth and environmental loss. Colcom Foundation has assembled a picture of how the American landscape has changed since 1970, and what that change has meant for the species that share it.
How the Land Has Changed
By 2020, human-built structures and surfaces covered more than 187,000 square miles of U.S. territory, a figure that had grown by 31,000 square miles just since 2000. In total, the developed footprint had expanded by tens of thousands of square miles since the first Earth Day. The combined area paved or built over by 2020 was equivalent in size to Montana, West Virginia, and South Carolina.
Agricultural uses consumed 52 percent of the U.S. land base. Only 13 percent carried any conservation designation. That leaves a narrow margin for wildlife. Colcom Foundation connects these land use figures directly to population trends. Between 2000 and 2020 alone, the U.S. population grew by 48 million people, and developed land area expanded by 31,000 square miles in the same two decades.
Species Counts in Decline
North America lost 2.9 billion birds between 1970 and 2020. The Endangered Species Act listed 1,300 species as threatened or endangered by 2020. Twenty-three species were proposed for removal from the ESA in 2021 because they had gone extinct. IUCN assessments show that among both threatened and near-threatened species categories, high percentages have declining populations.
Colcom Foundation points to the Half-Earth proposal as context for what genuine sustainability would require: reserving 50 percent of the planet’s surface for nature to protect around 80 percent of Earth’s species. By 2020, the U.S. was consuming biocapacity at 478 percent of the level that would be sustainable under that framework. The foundation presents these figures to argue that the scale of the problem calls for proportional responses, starting with a willingness to address population growth openly. Refer to this article for additional information.
Find more information about Colcom Foundation on https://www.guidestar.org/profile/31-1479839