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- LONDON (Rueters) - Ten percent of the world's tree species are at risk
of extinction because of felling, forest fires and poor forest management,
conservationists said in a report on Tuesday.
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- "With 77 species already extinct,
this report has now confirmed our worst nightmare," Steve Howard of
the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said in a statement.
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- The "World List of Threatened Trees"
details more than 8,753 of the world's 80,000 to 100,000 tree species as
being in danger of extinction.
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- The list is the product of a three-year
project by the World Conservation Monitoring Center, partly financed by
the WWF, and the Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation
Union (IUCN).
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- Howard called on governments meeting
in Geneva this week for the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests to act quickly
to save the trees.
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- "The governments gathering this
week must now realize the sense of urgency to increase forest protection,
eliminate illegal logging and improve forest management," Howard said.
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- The list includes several species with
just one tree left, such as China's single remaining Carpinus putoensis,which
survives fenced off at the edge of a sparse forest, the victim of deforestation.
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- Conservationists said most living species
were dependent for their survival on trees, particularly in tropical forests
that were home to 90 percent of the world's species.
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- "If we can't save these elephants
of the plant world, then the prognosis for all other species which depend
on trees is frightening," said the IUCN's Wendy Strahm.
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