One-fifth of all Earth's plant species are at risk of extinction - and we're to blame. In Southeast Asia, rainforests are being replaced by palm oil plantations. In Madagascar, the £64 billion tropical global timber industry is decimating native plant populations. "The rate of extinction we're seeing is something in the region of 1,000 times more than the background rate," says Steven Bachman, research leader in species conservation at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and co-author of the first report to bring together the collective knowledge of the world's botanists.
Kew's State of the World's Plants report records 391,000 vascular species. Eighty-two per cent are thought to be at risk. The report helps Kew determine what to add to its Millennium Seed Bank, where it saves wild species as insurance against extinction.
By 2020, Kew aims to have 25 per cent of the world's plants preserved in its West Sussex repository. But as more wild plant species disappear, humans will miss out on thousands of plants that could be useful as biofuels, medicines or food. Some 31,000 plants have a documented use, more than half of them medicinal. Bachman says many more await discovery. "By no means have we exhausted the possible uses of plants," he says. "We're really just chipping away at a huge mass of potential."
The infographic below shows what's threatening plant species. Extinction risks fall into 12 categories and are sorted by the precise nature of the threat. The bigger the bubble, the more plant species at risk of becoming extinct due to that threat.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
