Over One-Tenth of World's Plants Threatened, Researchers Say
4/8/98
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Over One-Tenth of World's Plants Threatened, Researchers Say
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 4/8/98
WASHINGTON (AP) - Drumming up public sympathy for saving threatened
dipterocarps and cycads may be tougher than it was for huggables like pandas
and seal pups, but conservationists say the effort is necessary.
The World Conservation Union, concluding a 20-year research effort, said in a
report Wednesday that 12.5 percent of the world's seed-producing plants and
ferns -- nearly 34,000 species in all - are threatened with extinction.
"The bottom line is, if you want to eat you'll pay attention to plant
conservation," said Brian Boom, vice president of the New York Botanical
Garden. Protecting native plants, he said, "is our insurance policy for the
future."
"We need protected areas for threatened species, we need areas that are managed
in such a way that threatened plants and others can coexist," said Deborah
Jensen, director of conservation science for the Nature Conservancy.
"The crucial thing is knowing. If you don't know what you're got, you don't
know what's threatened. That's what this book is all about," added Robert Fri,
director of the Smithsonian Institution's national Museum of Natural History.
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.
There are two main reasons for the threat, according to Nature Conservancy
President John C. Sawhill, loss of habitat and competition from the
introduction of non-native species.
The report covers vascular plants -- conifers, ferns and flowering plants --
but not mosses, lichens, algae and fungi. It was being released 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 threatened. 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," Boom said.
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,
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and New York Botanical Garden.
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.