how we're losing nature

So the other day I pointed out how I truly believe nature makes some of the most amasing art... Trying to finish (FINALLLY!!!!) a second draft of my second thesis chapter -- this has been somewhat of a protracted affair to say the least, I keep on coming across numbers that are just startling... and I've always wanted to put them up on my website. One day I'll get around to it - in the mean time they'll be here for everyone's discomfort.
So here goes a few of them:

• More than half of all natural habitat on agriculturally useable land has already been cleared
• 3/4 of harvested fish populations are overexploited
• Caribbean green turtles have declined in numbers by 99.9% since the arrival by Columbus
• Australian dugong populations and Chesapeake Bay oyster harvests have declined by 98% in the past century
• Shark numbers in the northwest Atlantic have plummeted to 75% of their size in the last 15 years alone

This all has serious economic repercussions for humanity , including for e.g. a $2 billion bill for income support and restraining following the collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery due to overexploitation.

Today in the news I read that the European Union decided to ban bluefin tuna fishing for the rest of the year. Why? because the imposed quota has already been reached ... yet, how much of a difference this will make is debatable as about one in every three bluefin landed is caught illegally .. an activity not least perpetrated by the French! Yes there are definite moments when I am not very proud of my heritage!!!!
The story of the bluefin tuna is a sad one -- not very many are left roaming the sea... and in the Med, in the Sea of Sicily, where ancient tradition had local men's lives intricately linked to that of tuna (in many villages tuna fishing was considered a right of passage) by fishing using tonnaras, a thousand-year old ritual, the last such operation closed last year.

I'll paste here a description of it taken from the National Geographic, who recently dedicated an entire edition to the fisheries crisis:

"The story of giant bluefin tuna began with unfathomable abundance, as they surged through the Straits of Gibraltar each spring, fanning out across the Mediterranean to spawn. Over millennia, fishermen devised a method of extending nets from shore to intercept the fish and funnel them into chambers, where they were slaughtered. By the mid-1800s, a hundred tuna traps—known as tonnara in Italy and almadraba in Spain—harvested up to 15,000 metric tons of bluefin annually. The fishery was sustainable, supporting thousands of workers and their families.

[...] In 1864, Favignana's fishermen took a record 14,020 bluefin, averaging 425 pounds (190 kilograms). [...] One sign of the Favignana tonnara's diminishment is that it is run by a Rome marketing executive, Chiara Zarlocco, whose plan for the future is to dress the fishermen in historic costumes as they reenact the mattanza, [which occurs when the tuna are channeled into a netted chamber and lifted to the surface by fishermen who kill them with gaffs]. "