At least 571 plant species, from the Chile sandalwood to the St. Helena olive, have gone extinct in the wild over the past 250 years, according to a new study that has biodiversity experts worried about what the findings suggest for the future of life on Earth.
“It is frightening not just because of the 571 number but because I think that is a gross underestimate.”
—Maria Vorontsova, study co-author
“Plants underpin all life on Earth, they provide the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat, as well as making up the backbone of the world’s ecosystems—so plant extinction is bad news for all species,” study co-authur Eimear Nic Lughadha of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew said in a statement.
For the first-of-its-kind study, published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers at Key Stockholm University compiled all known plant extinction records. That effort, Nature reported, stems from a database that Kew’s Rafaël Govaerts started in 1988 “to track the status of every known plant species.”
The researchers’ new findings, according to co-author Aelys M. Humphreys of Stockholm University, “provide an unprecedented window into plant extinction in modern times.”
“Most people can name a mammal or bird that has become extinct in recent centuries, but few can name an extinct plant,” Humphreys said. “This study is the first time we have an overview of what plants have already become extinct, where they have disappeared from, and how quickly this is happening.”
The Guardian noted how the figure compares with other analyses of species loss:
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