One in Eight of the World's Plants Threatened
4/7/98
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Title: One in Eight of the World's Plants Threatened
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/7/98
Byline: Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (April 7, 1998 10:49 p.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) --
About one out of every eight plants in the world faces possible extinction
because of a loss of habitat and competition from the introduction of non-
native species, a 20-year study by conservationists shows.
The report by the World Conservation Union found that 12.5 percent of the
world's seed-producing plants and ferns -- nearly 34,000 species in all -- are
endangered.
The problem is greater in some regions than others, the researchers said. In
the United States, which they say is the most thoroughly studied country, some
29 percent of plants, or 16,000 species, are at risk of extinction.
"Here in Washington we are in the middle of our annual Cherry Blossom Festival.
Yet few of us realize that 14 percent of the species in the cherry family are
threatened with extinction," said W. John Kress, chairman of the botany
department at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.
The report covers vascular plants -- conifers, ferns and flowering plants --
but not mosses, lichens, algae and fungi. It was being released Wednesday at
news conferences in Washington, London, Cape Town, South Africa and Canberra,
Australia.
Overall, the report said, of 270,000 species of vascular plants, 33,798 species
in 200 countries are threaatened. Some 91 percent of the endangered plants are
found only in a single country, a limited distribution that makes them more
vulnerable.
On a lonely hilltop on the island of Mauritius, for example, the last stand of
Elaeocarpus bojeri holds out, its fruit eaten by a colony of monkeys, its
territory overrun by the strawberry guava introduced from Brazil. E. bojeri is
a plant so rare it doesn't even have a common name.
In central Chile deforestation threatens Berberidopsis corallina, a coral plant
long used by local Mapuche Indians to make baskets, their primary means of
making a living.
For dipterocarps, a type of tree that includes some valuable timber species in
Southeast Asia, more than 32 percent of species are threatened. Among the
tropical shrubs and trees known as cycads the threat varies from species to
species.
In the rose family, 14 percent of species are said to be endangered. In the
lily and iris families, 32 percent are in trouble.
"Every nation understands and appreciates its biotic wealth much less than it
does its material and cultural wealth. Ironically, it is precisely the
biological assets that are most at risk," Brian Boom of the New York Botanical
Garden said in a statement.
Many of the threatened plants have medical value, the researchers said. For
example, 75 percent of yews, which have cancer-fighting compounds, and 12
percent of willows, from which aspirin was derived, are threatened.
The report, called the Red List of Threatened Plants, was compiled over 20
years of research by scientists, conservation groups, botanical gardens and
museums around the world. U.S. participants included the Nature Conservancy,
Smiithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and New York Botanical
Garden.
Copyright © 1998 The Associated Press