October 9th 2023.
Humans have been heavily reliant on plants for medicines for centuries. Now, scientists have warned that humanity is 'staring down the barrel' of losing up to half of its future medicines due to the alarming rate of plant species extinction.
Nearly half of all flowering plants are threatened, amounting to over 100,000 species, with 77% of those yet to be discovered facing a high risk of extinction. In some cases, plants are going extinct between the time of first discovery and when they are catalogued. This process takes, on average, 16 years.
The main cause of these extinctions is habitat loss, such as deforestation or the construction of dams which flood river areas further upstream. Conservation analyst Dr Matilda Brown believes climate change is 'certainly on the horizon', although it is much harder to measure it as a threat.
The State of the World's Plants and Fungi report, published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, calls for all newly described species to be treated as threatened unless proven otherwise. Dr Brown highlights the severity of this issue, stating, “We’re looking at more than 100,000 species that are threatened. That’s more than the total number of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, all of our vertebrates put together.”
She further emphasizes the importance of this issue to humanity, “And when we consider that nine out of 10 of our medicines come from plants, what we’re potentially staring down the barrel of is losing up to half of all of our future medicines. So this isn’t just a big number if you’re a plant. It’s a big number in terms of potential impacts for humanity.”
Many newly described species are vulnerable to extinction because they are specific to just one region, or they are in areas heavily marked by humans. The Amazon, India, China, tropical South East Asia and parts of the Middle East are knowledge 'dark spots' due to conflict, difficult terrain, and lack of funding.
The World Checklist of Vascular Plants contains over 350,000 names and is the most complete record of known plant species. It is compiled by Rafeal Govaerts, who has been pursuing Charles Darwin's dream of seeing every plant species on Earth recorded.
Fungi is one of the least-understood parts of the natural world, with estimates suggesting there are around 2.5 million species, of which only 155,000 have been catalogued. Professor Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Kew, believes that DNA sequencing and studying molecular data could help speed up the process of cataloguing all fungal species, which is estimated to take between 750-1,000 years at the current rate.
Since the pandemic in 2020, scientists have described 10,200 new fungal species and more than 8,600 species of plants. This further highlights the importance of preserving plant and fungal species, with Professor Antonelli calling for policy makers to take them into account when identifying areas to protect as part of the international goal to protect 30% of the planet by 2030.
Ultimately, the future of plants and fungi is in our hands. Their conservation is essential for human life and the future of medicine.
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