1/2 Of World's Bamboo Species Face Extinction - Sorry, Pandas, Lemurs, etc

"It’s bad news for pandas. Up to half of the world's 1,200 woody bamboo species are in danger of extinction, a UN report has revealed. Urgent action is needed to protect the plants and the species that depend on them, the study’s authors conclude.

Deforestation is known to be robbing many bamboo species of their native habitat. Yet the effect this is actually having on their distribution is not well understood, as many of the areas where the plants live are extremely remote.

To get a better idea of how much bamboo is left, researchers at the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre combined hundreds of academic reports about the distribution of different bamboo species with global maps of forest cover, and have produced a colour-coded chart of bamboo hot spots.

They found that around 600 species are “endangered”, with less than 20,000 square kilometres of native habitat. And some 250 varieties have less than 2000 square kilometres of land (the size of London) left to live in. “A few of these species have virtually no forest left,” says ecologist Valerie Kapos, who helped draw up the report."

EDIT

http://www.nature.com/nsu/040510/040510-2.html

Unbelievable.