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A young pygmy elephant walking near her dead mother in Gunung Rara Forest Reserve in Malaysia's sabah state on Borneo Island.
By 2020, the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and other vertebrate species are on course to have fallen by more than two-thirds over a period of just 50 years, the Living Planet report found.
The current rate of extinction is about 100 times faster than is considered normal - greater than during some of the previous five mass extinctions in the Earth's history.
While the dinosaurs probably died out because a giant meteor hit the planet, just one species is the cause of the current problems: humans.
This is one of the reasons why geologists are close to declaring a new epoch, called the Anthropocene after the Greek for human, because the fossils of so many extinct animals will one day form a noticeable, global band in the rocks of the future.
The Living Planet report, produced by conservation charity WWF and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), analysed data for 3,706 species in what was described as the most comprehensive study of the state of wildlife globally.
They found that between 1970 and 2012, the average decline in population was 58 per cent.
And at the current rate this figure will hit 67 per cent by 2020, the year by which the world has pledged to halt the loss of wildlife.
Dr Mike Barrett, director of science and policy at WWF-UK, said: "For the first time since the demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we face a global mass extinction of wildlife.
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