Erik Petersen/Washington Post via Getty Images , a new Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis. You don’t have to look far to find signs that wildlife is in peril. And most of the news stories about it these days follow a predictable formula: Species are going extinct and, in most cases, humans are to blame. To be clear, that’s true, and there’s every reason to be alarmed. A report from September, for example, found that the populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish have declined by almost 70 percent, on average, since 1970. Another finds that 1 million species are threatened with extinction.