Climate change seen pushing plants to extinction
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Climate change seen pushing plants to extinction*
12 Sep 2006 13:39:36 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of plant species are being pushed
to the brink of extinction by global warming, and those already at the
extremes are in the greatest danger, a leading botanist said on Tuesday.
Paul Smith, head of Britain's Millennium Seed Bank, said the drylands of
the world which cover 40 percent of the earth's surface and are home to
more than one-third of the population faced the bleakest future.
"In the southern hemisphere the plants can either go up or south. But in
South Africa's Cape they can't do either, so the 8,000 unique species of
fijnbos (indigenous vegetation) there are a real worry," he told Reuters
on a visit to London's Kew Gardens.
Smith's team is on target to have sorted and stored seeds from 10
percent of the world's plant species by 2010 in a race against time as
global temperatures rise due to burning fossil fuels for transport and
power.
"The trouble is that when we started collecting it was generally agreed
that there were 242,000 plant species. But now some people believe it
could be as high as 400,000.
"We really need to find out just what is out there before it has gone
forever," he said, noting that on Robinson Crusoe island off Chile
scientists found there had been eight extinctions in just the past decade.
But it is not just in the southern hemisphere that climate change is
creating radical changes in the environment as warm weather expends
steadily northwards, bringing with it new species and threatening the
local vegetation.
In England not only had the climate already changed to favour
drought-resistant Mediterranean plant and tree species, it had brought
with it insect pests that were previously unknown there because they
would not have survived the winter frosts.
Tony Kirkham, tree specialist at the world famous Royal Botanical
Gardens at Kew in southwest London, noted that the Macedonian Leaf Miner
moth had invaded in recent years and was attacking -- and eventually
killing -- Horse Chestnut Trees.
While drought stress and pest attack was starting to cripple some
indigenous species, dry climate trees like Eucalyptus from Australia,
Turkish Hazel and the Sweetgum from the United States were finding the
new growing climate very much to their liking.
Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson said scientists predicted that in
Britain alone rainfall would have halved by 2080, with hotter, drier
summers and warmer, wetter winters with frosts -- essential to the
natural cycle -- a rarity.