The expansion of agriculture to feed a growing global population of more than 8 billion people will shrink the world’s remaining wilderness areas by the end of the century, according to projections reported in a new study published this month in the peer-reviewed, scientific journal “Biological Conservation.” Andrew Jacobson, an assistant professor at Catawba College, is co-author of the study. The study showed that wild areas could be lost at a rate of more than 32,000 acres per day between now and the end of the century due to a combination of expanding agriculture and urban areas. That’s a loss of wilderness roughly equal to the size of the city of Asheville on a daily basis.
