South-West Australia Recognized as Biodiversity Hotspot
2/25/00
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Title: Hotspots highlight species risk
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: February 25, 2000
Researchers have identified an Australian site among 25 biodiversity
hotspots where more species are under threat than elsewhere on Earth.
Comprising only 1.4 per cent of the Earth's land surface, the
hotspots contain as many as 35 per cent of all terrestrial
vertebrates and 44 per cent of all higher plant species.
The British and American researchers, led by Norman Myers of Green
College, Oxford, argue that focusing conservation strategies on these
areas would be the most cost-effective way of stemming the current
tide of extinctions, now more widespread than at any time since the
death of the dinosaurs.
The hotspots identified by the team ranged from Australia to the
Americas, and included parts of Africa, central and eastern Asia, New
Zealand and the Mediterranean basin.
The Australian hotspot is the tip of south-western Australia.
Hotspots in the Pacific include New Caledonia, all of New Zealand and
Polynesia-Micronesia.
To qualify as a hotspot, an area had to contain at least 1,500 (or
0.5 per cent) of the world's 300,000 plant species.
In fact, 15 of the 25 harboured at least 2,500 endemic plant species,
and 10 of them at least 5,000.
The hotspots contained the remaining habitats of 133,149 plant and
9,645 vertebrate species, the researchers reported in the journal
Nature.
They were so threatened that, having already lost 88 per cent of
their primary vegetation, they all seemed likely to lose much, if not
all, of what was left in the foreseeable future.
The eight hottest hotspots were also listed, the leaders being
Madagascar, the Philippines and neighbouring Sundaland, Brazil's
Atlantic forest and the Caribbean.
Some of these featured the world's most depleted habitats. For
instance, the Caribbean retained only 11.3 per cent of its primary
vegetation, Madagascar 9.9 per cent, Sundaland 7.8 per cent and
Brazil's Atlantic Forest 7.5 per cent.
Thirty-eight per cent of the hotspots were already protected in parks
and reserves, but all were in need of stronger safeguards.
Unprotected zones amounted to 1.3 million square kilometres, or 62
per cent of the total hotspot area.