Plants Are Going Extinct at Least 500 Times Faster Than if Humans Weren’t Around

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Plants Are Going Extinct at Least 500 Times Faster Than if Humans Weren’t Around

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount.

more…

I imagine certain plants have come to dominate as well, besides our food crops, weeds due to land clearing

Cymek said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Plants Are Going Extinct at Least 500 Times Faster Than if Humans Weren’t Around

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount.

more…

I imagine certain plants have come to dominate as well, besides our food crops, weeds due to land clearing

Well, humans are creating new plant species much faster than if we weren’t around.

Let me guess, the highest rate of plant extinctions is in Hawaii?

Hey, guess what, i’m right. Hawaii is the world hotspot for plant extinctions. 79 extinctions. More than twice any other location. There are only a few native plants left in Hawaii, so that extinction rate has come to an end.

Good article.

Keep in mind that i’m the person who wrote most of the wikipedia article on list of recently extinct birds. So i can confirm that bird extinctions are noticeably rarer than plant extinctions. Not surprising.

Do they have extinction dates? Looking up the nature article. No they don’t. That’s a very bad oversight on their part. Nature journal should have insisted on it.

Did you notice the number of plants thought to be extinct that are rediscovered alive each year? It’s quite large isn’t it.

It doesn’t surorise me at all that the Red Book list is so incomplete. I’ve come to expect it.

mollwollfumble said:

Cymek said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Plants Are Going Extinct at Least 500 Times Faster Than if Humans Weren’t Around

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount.

more…

I imagine certain plants have come to dominate as well, besides our food crops, weeds due to land clearing

Well, humans are creating new plant species much faster than if we weren’t around.

Let me guess, the highest rate of plant extinctions is in Hawaii?

Hey, guess what, i’m right. Hawaii is the world hotspot for plant extinctions. 79 extinctions. More than twice any other location. There are only a few native plants left in Hawaii, so that extinction rate has come to an end.

Good article.

Keep in mind that i’m the person who wrote most of the wikipedia article on list of recently extinct birds. So i can confirm that bird extinctions are noticeably rarer than plant extinctions. Not surprising.

Do they have extinction dates? Looking up the nature article. No they don’t. That’s a very bad oversight on their part. Nature journal should have insisted on it.

Did you notice the number of plants thought to be extinct that are rediscovered alive each year? It’s quite large isn’t it.

It doesn’t surorise me at all that the Red Book list is so incomplete. I’ve come to expect it.

I would say that figure is highly conservative. When you think of the vast tracks of land that have been cleared would mean many unknown species were sent extinct before they were even discovered. In Europe think of when the land was cleared (hundreds, if not thousands of years ago). Sure trees would probably survive, but unlikely all the small plants easily lost to land clearance and over grazing. Victoria, SA and NSW are shown with small loses, but again vast areas were cleared before the land was investigated botanically.

In WA and possibly other States if a plant has not been seen in habitat for more than 50 years, it is considered extinct. However many of these plants have particular growing requirements, like only after a bushfire and then only for one year, so are easily missed. Due to the low WA extinct plant numbers, many of these 50 year extinctions have obviously been removed from the statistics as their true numbers are considerably more.

There are many plants that have very specific habitat requirements and so only exist in small pockets and are therefore highly vulnerable. Personally I don’t pay much attention to this type of stats, although the situation expressed does indicate what is going on.