Man is responsible for the greatest extinction of wildlife since the demise of the dinosaurs with a 35% decrease in biodiversity over the past 35 years, according to new research.

The finding is expected to emerge in the latest audit of the world’s animal and plant life by WWF, formerly the World Wide Fund for Nature.

It will warn that humanity’s ruthless exploitation of the environment is creating an unsustainable “ecological debt”, with more species wiped out in the past 35 years than in the previous 300.

Among the best known is the Yangtze river dolphin, which last year became the first large vertebrate declared extinct in more than 50 years.

The report is the latest of several analyses, all drawing similarly stark conclusions. Earlier this month the International Union for the Conservation of Nature published its “red list” of endangered species, revealing that a quarter of mammal species are facing extinction.

“This is destruction on a grand scale,” said Professor Kerry Turner, director of the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia. “Unless we take some fairly drastic policy and management decisions, then that rate of loss will only increase.”

WWF’s Living Planet Index, the basis of this week’s report, tracks the population trends among more than 1,800 species of mammals, fishes, birds, amphibians and reptiles. It also assesses humanity’s “ecological footprint” – human demand on the planet.

Between 1970 and 2005, land-based species fell in number by 25%, marine species by 28% and freshwater species by 29%. In the past, such assessments have tried simply to list species rendered extinct or habitats under threat but many now try to assess such losses in economic terms. The destruction of a rainforest for lumber, for example, may give short-term profit to a timber firm but destroys a resource that would have benefited the entire planet indefinitely if left alone.

Last May a United Nations conference on biodiversity warned that the destruction of natural resources – which includes four species an hour becoming extinct – would cost around £440 billion a year by 2010, reaching £11 trillion a year by 2050.

Separate calculations show that humanity as a whole is consuming 25% more natural resources than the planet can replace.

Britain is among the most profligate, consuming resources at such a rate that, if replicated globally, would require more than three planets to support the world’s population.

Tony Juniper, environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth, said: “We are entering a mass extinction that is without precedent for a million years. Our consumer society is simply refusing to face up to this challenge” Extinctions in the past few years include: The Caribbean monk seal, in June 2008, after a five-year hunt for survivors. The Panamanian golden frog, the national symbol of Panama, in February 2008. The west African black rhino, in July 2006 – wiped out by poaching for its horn, used as an aphrodisiac in China.

In the UK the number of animals on the list of species that must be protected by law has risen in 10 years from 454 to 1,149.

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