One in five will die

That is a grim headline, but the reality is not that far off. In London there is one of the world’s oldest horticultural centers called Kew Gardens.

It is where Capt. Bligh’s breadfruit seedlings were brought, where the first specimens of previously-thought-extinct ancient Chinese dawn redwoods were nurtured, where South American rubber tree seeds were harvested to create the Malaysian rubber industry, and, never least, where pineapples were cultivated before being shipped to grow in what was pineapple-virgin Hawaii almost 200 years ago. Kew is a world authority on plants.

Together with the Natural History Museum in London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Kew Gardens has completed a multi-year study that shows that more than a fifth of the world’s plants are under threat of extinction.

How many species is that? About 80,000 to 100,000 plant species are set to disappear due to pressure from human activities across the world — from the destruction of the Atlantic rainforest in South America to slash-and-burn land clearance in Madagascar, palm oil plantations in Indonesia, and intensive mono-culture agriculture in Europe and the United States. They call this danger list (made from the five major plant groups) the Sampled Red List Index For Plants.

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The IUCN — International Union for Conservation of Nature (Geneva, Switzerland) — helps the world find pragmatic solutions to some of most pressing environment and development challenges. Their motto seems to be “Find the problem, assess it and fix it, don’t turn it into a political game or make it into a business.�

IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental network — a democratic membership union with more than 1,000 government and NGO member organizations and almost 11,000 volunteer scientists in more than 160 countries. They are an interesting group dedicated apolitically to uncovering the truth and starting the ball rolling.

Meanwhile, Professor Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said, “This study confirms what we already suspected, that plants are under threat and the main cause is human-induced habitat loss. Plants are the foundation of biodiversity and their significance in uncertain climatic, economic and political times has been overlooked for far too long. We cannot sit back and watch plant species disappear — plants are the basis of all life on earth, providing clean air, water, food and fuel. All animal and bird life depends on them and so do we.�

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So what is the hope of reversing this trend? If the hopes to save animal species are anything to go buy, the prospects are dismal. All the recent environmental meetings resulted in not one plan or funding to preserve endangered species. Once again, “targets� hoped for in 2010 were sadly missed even though all nations signed on to targets in 2002 to significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010, but scientists warned earlier this year that the rate at which species and habitats were disappearing had not slowed one iota. In fact, in many regions they have accelerated.

Dr. Eimear Nic Lughadha, from Kew Gardens: “What we want to do is remind politicians it’s not just about the big furry animals and charismatic birds.�

She went on to explain that biodiversity — the very life on earth as we know it — is underpinned by the “perhaps less attractive organisms� including insects and plants, which made up the foundations of the natural world and that the assessment that a fifth of plants were at risk was likely to be conservative.

“We think it is a conservative estimate of the overall rate of threat to plants, and we suspect if we had a full inventory, the percentage would be at least this high and probably a little bit higher,� she said.

So? Go look at your garden, yank out one in five plants by the roots, all of the same species (take daffodils for example, or snowdrops, or maple trees) — try and imagine your world without one fifth of the local species. Don’t like the prospect? Neither does the balance of life on earth. Lend a hand; do something before it is too late.

Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.