A new study has some hopeful news about our future — the average human's impact or ecological "footprint" on natural habitats around the world is declining. It didn't include human impacts that don't directly affect land use, such as pollution and climate change. "Housing needs and transportation needs are concentrated in a much smaller area, sparing a lot of the wider landscape from our impacts," Venter said. "Where the human footprint is high, you don't get a lot of species or species are unable to move through [those landscapes]." Canada had the second lowest human footprint except for Greenland, due to its large size and relatively small population.

Source: CBC News August 24, 2016 15:29 UTC