De-Plantation

Just came back from a viewing of Mr. Larry Lansburgh's "Dream People of the Amazon" - a movie about the Achuar people in the Amazon Rain Forest. The movie shed some light on the enormous bio-diversity in that region. Next, this...

20 Percent of Plant Species Face Extinction : Discovery News: "Out of 4,000 plant species surveyed, 22 percent were classed as threatened in a recent study.
The loss of plants could have potentially catastrophic effects for life on Earth.
Human-induced habitat loss is the main problem.
"More than a fifth of the world's plant species faces the threat of extinction, a trend with potentially catastrophic effects for life on Earth, according to research released on Wednesday.

But a separate study cautioned that extinction of mammals had been overestimated and suggested some mammal species thought to have been wiped out may yet be rediscovered.

Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, said the report on plant loss was the most accurate mapping yet of the threat to the planet's estimated 380,000 plant species.

'This study confirms what we already suspected, that plants are under threat and the main cause is human-induced habitat loss,' Hopper said at the launch of the so-called Sampled Red List Index."