How cities drive plants extinct
By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News How towns and cities cause the extinction of local plants has been revealed for the first time. An international team of botanists has compared extinction rates of plants within 22 cities around the world. Both Singapore and New York City in the US now contain less than one-tenth of their original vegetation, reveals the analysis published in Ecology Letters. However, San Diego, US and Durban, South Africa still retain over two-thirds of their original flora. Both the pace of urban change and how many plants remain in a city are good predictors of whether plant species will survive there in the future, says the report. “The rapid and ongoing growth of cities and towns significantly threatens global biodiversity,” says Dr Amy Hahs, a scientist working at the Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, Australia. …
