Last seen in 1979, the Omaniundu reed frog with bright green – almost fluorescent looking – spots was rediscovered by Jos Kielgast from The Natural History Museum of Denmark last week.
Credit: Jos Kielgast / Natural History Museum of Denmark
LONDON: More than a fifth of the world's plant species faces the threat of extinction, a trend with potentially catastrophic effects for life on Earth, according to new research.
But a separate study cautioned that extinction of mammals had been overestimated and suggested some mammal species thought to have been wiped out may yet be rediscovered.
Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, said the report on plant loss was the most accurate mapping yet of the threat to the planet's estimated 380,000 plant species.
Sampled Red List Index launched
"This study confirms what we already suspected, that plants are under threat and the main cause is human-induced habitat loss," Hopper said at the launch of the so-called Sampled Red List Index.
The study, carried out by Kew with the Natural History Museum in London and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), set a "major baseline" for future conservation efforts, he said.
"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," Hopper added.
Preventing extinction by 2010
The study comes ahead of a meeting in Nagoya, Japan, from October 18 to 29, where members of the U.N.'s Biodiversity Convention will set new targets to save endangered wildlife.
Craig Hilton-Taylor of the IUCN said he hoped the Nagoya meeting would set the goal of preventing the extinction of any known threatened species by 2020.
"We want to make sure that plants will not be forgotten," he said.
Plants in more danger than birds
In their study, researchers assessed almost 4,000 species, of which 22% were classed as threatened, especially in tropical rain forest.
Plants were more threatened than birds, as threatened as mammals and less threatened than amphibians or corals, it said. Gymnosperms, the plant group including fir trees, were the most threatened.
The greatest peril came from man-induced habitat loss, mostly the conversion of natural habitats for crops or livestock. Human activity accounted for 81% of threats, said Kew researcher Neil Brummitt.
