More than one-third of US animals and plants at risk of extinction

MORE than one-third of animals and plants in the US are at risk of extinction, with 41 per cent of ecosystems facing collapse, a leading conservation research group said.

NatureServe said in a report released on Monday (Feb 6) that 40 per cent of animals and 34 per cent of plants in the country were in danger of disappearing. The group, which analysed data from its network of over 1,000 scientists in the US and Canada, said the report was its most comprehensive yet, synthesising five decades’ worth of data.

The report also pinpointed areas in the US where land was unprotected, leaving animals and plants exposed to the most threats.

Sean O’Brien, president of NatureServe, said the conclusions of the report were “terrifying”. He hoped it would help lawmakers understand the urgency of passing protections, such as the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, which had stalled out in Congress in 2022. The draft law’s congressional sponsors have said that it will be reintroduced soon.

“If we want to maintain the panoply of biodiversity that we currently enjoy, we need to target the places where the biodiversity is most threatened,” O’Brien said. “This report allows us to do that.”

US Representative Don Beyer said NatureServe’s work would be critical in helping agencies identify which areas to prioritise and where to establish migration routes. Beyer is a Democrat who has proposed legislation to create a corridor system to rebuild threatened populations of wildlife and plants.

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“The data reported by NatureServe is grim, a harrowing sign of the very real problems our wildlife and ecosystems are facing,” he told Reuters. “I am thankful for their efforts, which will give a boost to efforts to protect biodiversity.”

Among the species at risk of disappearing are icons such as the carnivorous Venus flytrap, which is found in the wild only in a few counties of North and South Carolina.

Nearly half of all cacti species in the US are also at risk of extinction, in addition to 200 species of trees, including a maple-leaf oak found in Arkansas. Among the country’s ecosystems, the expansive temperate and boreal grasslands are among the most imperilled, with over half of 78 grassland types at risk of a range-wide collapse.

The report found that threats were varied, and included “habitat degradation and land conversion, invasive species, damming and polluting of rivers, and climate change”.

It also found that the highest percentages of animals, plants and ecosystems were at risk in California, Texas and the south-eastern US. Wesley Knapp, chief botanist at NatureServe, said those areas were the country’s richest in terms of biodiversity. But he noted that they were also where human population growth had boomed in recent decades, and where human encroachment on nature had been the harshest.

Conservationists have to decide where to spend scant funds even among the most vulnerable species to prevent extinctions. Knapp highlighted the threats facing plants, which typically receive less conservation funding than animals. NatureServe identified nearly 1,250 plants in its “critically imperilled” category, the final stage before extinction.

“Which means a lot of plants are not going to get conservation attention. We’re almost in triage mode, trying to keep our natural systems in place,” Knapp said.

Vivian Negron-Ortiz, the president of the Botanical Society of America and a botanist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, said there was still a lot that scientists did not know and had not yet discovered about biodiversity in the US. She added that NatureServe’s data helped to illuminate that darkness.

Negron-Ortiz, who was not involved in the NatureServe report, said that more than anything, she saw the new data as a call to action.

“This report shows the need for the public to help prevent the disappearance of many of our plant species,” she said. “The public can help by finding and engaging with local organisations that are actively working to protect wild places and conserve rare species.”

John Kanter, senior wildlife biologist at the National Wildlife Fund, said the data in the report, which he was not involved with, was essential to guiding officials in creating impactful State Wildlife Action Plans (Swaps). States and regions must create Swaps every decade to receive federal funding for protecting vulnerable species.

Currently, US$50 million in federal funding is divided among all states to carry out their Swaps. The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would have increased that to US$1.4 billion. This would have a huge impact on states’ abilities to protect animals and ecosystems, Kanter said. The NatureServe report could act as a road map for officials on how to best spend their money.

“Our biodiversity and its conservation is like a ‘nature savings account’, and if we don’t have this kind of accounting of what’s out there and how’s it doing, and what are the threats, there’s no way to prioritise action,” he said. “This new report is critical for that.” REUTERS