Climate change threatens 771 endangered plant and lichen species

2023-07-27 11:44:16

MADRID, 27 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –

All plants and lichens included in the list of endangered species of the Threatened Species Law are sensitive to climate changebut few plans are in place to address this threat directly, according to a new study by Amy Cassandra Wrobleski of Pennsylvania State University and colleagues published in the open access journal PLOS Climate.

Climate change is expected to have a major impact on species around the world, especially in endangered species, which are already rare. Most of the organisms included in the list of the Threatened Species Law are plants and lichens, and yet the risk that climate change poses to threatened plants has not been systematically assessed for more than a decade.

To fill this gap, Wrobleski’s team adapted existing assessment tools used to examine the threat of climate change to wild animals and applied them to 771 listed plant species. Specifically, they evaluated the degree of sensitivity to climate change of the plants and lichens included in the list, whether climate change was recognized as a threat to each species and whether steps were being taken to address the threat.

The researchers found that all listed plant and lichen species are at least slightly threatened by climate change. Although most documentation of these species recognized climate change as a threat, little action was being taken to protect them.

While acknowledging the threat posed by climate change to rare plants is an important first step, direct action needs to be taken to ensure the recovery of many of these species, the team concludes. As conditions change over the next century, it will become even more important to set clear and precise targets for species recovery. The authors urge that their findings be used to aid conservation planning for threatened plants and lichens.and to inform future recommendations on species listing and recovery planning.

“We evaluated conservation plans for all endangered plant and lichen species listed in the Threatened Species Act and found that, while climate change is recognized as a threat to species, few conservation plans include measures to directly address climate change,” the authors explain. Climate change will affect not only people’s lives, but also rare and threatened species and ecosystems with which we interact on a daily basis.“.