Category: Endangered Plants

A graceful birch native to Japan is one of the rarest trees in the world. Two decades ago, botanists counted just 21 remaining in the wild, all confined to a single stand in the remote, rugged forest of the Chichibu Mountains — likely far too few for the species, Betula chichibuensis, to sustain itself. (Click on image or headline for full story)

These findings are disturbing,. They confirm that the scale of the illegal wildlife trade — including trade in plants — is much greater than we had previously thought, and that wildlife trafficking concerns many more species than the charismatic rhinos and elephants which tend to receive global attention.

Thus the question ‘How threatened are plants?’ is still very difficult to answer accurately. While completing assessments for each species of plant remains a distant prospect, by assessing a randomly selected sample of species the Sampled Red List Index for Plants gives, for the first time, an accurate view of how threatened plants are across the world. It represents the first key phase of ongoing efforts to monitor the status of the world s’plants. More than 20% of plant species assessed are threatened with extinction,

Scientists have raised the estimated number of tropical tree species to at least 40,000 to 53,000. Many tropical tree species risk extinction because of their rarity and restriction to small geographic areas, reaffirming the need for comprehensive, pan-tropical conservation efforts.