One Plant in Eight Worldwide Threatened with Extinction
4/8/98
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Title: One Plant in Eight Worldwide Threatened with Extinction
Source: Agence France-Presse
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/8/98
WASHINGTON, April 8 (AFP) - Nearly 34,000 plant species, or 12.5 percent of the
world's vascular flora, are threatened with extinction, according to a 20-year
study released here Wednesday.
Of that figure, "a staggeringly high 91 percent are limited in their
geographical distribution to single countries," according to John Kress, the
botany department chairman at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of
Natural History.
The list of plants -- a volume hundreds of pages long -- was drawn up by 16
organizations around the world under the aegis of the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN).
Disappearing species threaten the genetic diversity of the planet, on which
agricultural output and many pharmaceutical innovations depend heavily.
Nearly one quarter of all medicines sold in the United States contain at least
one active ingredient derived from a plant, according to Brian Boom, vice
president of the New York Botanical Garden.
In Brazil, where some 56,215 species were inventoried, 2.4 percent of all
plants are threatened with extinction.
In France, 4.2 percent of the 4,630 plants tallied are under threat. And in
Australia, 14.4 percent of native plants are endangered.
The highest percentages of endangered plant life were found in the islands of
Saint Helena (41.2 percent) and Mauritius (39.2 percent), largely due to
increasing human populations.
Bloom said scientists planned to inventory all plant genes within three years'
time. He said that with future technological advances, scientists might be able
to recreate extinct plants by cloning their DNA.