First world survey finds 9,600 tree species risk extinction

Yahoo – AFP, April 5, 2017

Brazil is the country with the most diverse tree population, with 8,715 species,
according to the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) group

The first ever global database of trees on Wednesday revealed that 9,600 tree species are threatened with extinction and identified a total of 60,065 in existence.

Brazil is the country with the most diverse tree population, with 8,715 species, according to the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) group.

It also has the largest number of tree species -- 4,333 -- that only exist there.

In total 58 percent of trees are so-called single country endemics, with 2,991 species only found in Madagascar and 2,584 only found in Australia.

After Brazil, Colombia is the second most diverse country, with 5,776 different tree species, followed by Indonesia, with 5,142.

The London-based BGCI, which represents an estimated 2,500 botanic gardens around the world, used data from more than 500 published sources to create the list.

Of the 60,065 tree species, only around 20,000 have been assessed for their conservation status -- of which 9,600 are threatened with extinction.

"BGCI's main reason for publishing the list is to provide a tool for people trying to conserve rare and threatened tree species," the organisation said in a statement.

"Currently, around 10,000 tree species are known to be threatened with extinction, largely by deforestation and over-exploitation.

"This number includes over 300 species that are critically endangered with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild."

Aside from the Arctic and the Antarctic where there are no trees, the Nearctic region -- comprising most of North America -- has the lowest diversity, with less than 1,400 tree species.

The database will be continually updated, as around 2,000 new plants are discovered and described each year.

'Secret gardens' provide safe food for Chinese officials

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2013-07-15

A farm in Inner Mongolia. (File photo/Xinhua)

When a Chinese person had dinner at a high court cafeteria in Shaanxi province two years ago, he was informed that the court had its private farm located 30km from Xi'an and the produce grown on site was absolutely safe, according to an unknown source reported in the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly.

Other sources revealed that another secret garden in Guangdong province grew not only organic produce, but also raised pigs, fish, chickens and ducks.

The weekly reported that the 103 suppliers selected during the 2008 Beijing Olympics continued to be closely connected with government officials and organizations even after the Olympics.

The owner of the New Century Breeding Farm in Beijing, surnamed Sun, who provided chicken eggs for the Olympics, said that since water supply, livestock feed and air quality at his farm passed government tests a decade ago, he has been supplying products to central government officials.

Surrounded by 2m-high walls and secured by five guards, the Beijing Customs Vegetable Farm and Country Club, which supplies organic vegetables to Beijing customs officials, stretches for more than 200 hectares. The weekly reported that the farm has provided vegetables exclusively to the customs office for more than a decade.

To avoid chemical pollution, animal waste is used as fertilizer and pesticides sprayed in the farms are also organic. Agricultural produce from such farms are real organic products and the safety of the food is emphasized.

Qi Yanming, former deputy secretary-general of the State Council, rephrased the wording of a report from July 1960 on food supplies for senior officials and intellectuals from "non-staple food supplement" to "special supply." Since then, "special supply" has become a mysterious and prestigious term in the public domain, the weekly pointed out.

A source close to the matter revealed that, in addition to the food provided in cafeterias at government organizations, the households of some food officials are also stocked by such farms.

At these prestigious farms, files on vegetables are as detailed as those on personnel management. All details, from the planting date to pesticides used, are well documented.

Tight controls have also been implemented to monitor the quality. If any of the links were found to be sub-standard, the farm would be disqualified from participating in the prestigious program, the report said.

Farmers selected to provide produce for officials told the weekly that "it is an honor to be selected and the inclusion also guarantees income."

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It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest

Forget meadows. The city’s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking. 

Take Part, by Clare Leschin-Hoar, February 21, 2012

Hungry? Just head over to the park. Seattle's new food forest aims to be
an edible wilderness. (Photo: Buena Vista Images/Getty Images)

Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.

“This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. Harrison is working on construction and permit drawings now and expects to break ground this summer.

The concept of a food forest certainly pushes the envelope on urban agriculture and is grounded in the concept of permaculture, which means it will be perennial and self-sustaining, like a forest is in the wild. Not only is this forest Seattle’s first large-scale permaculture project, but it’s also believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

“The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,” says Harrison.

That the plan came together at all is remarkable on its own. What started as a group project for a permaculture design course ended up as a textbook example of community outreach gone right.

“Friends of the Food Forest undertook heroic outreach efforts to secure neighborhood support. The team mailed over 6,000 postcards in five different languages, tabled at events and fairs, and posted fliers,” writes Robert Mellinger for Crosscut.

Neighborhood input was so valued by the organizers, they even used translators to help Chinese residents have a voice in the planning.

So just who gets to harvest all that low-hanging fruit when the time comes?

“Anyone and everyone,” says Harrison. “There was major discussion about it. People worried, ‘What if someone comes and takes all the blueberries?’ That could very well happen, but maybe someone needed those blueberries. We look at it this way—if we have none at the end of blueberry season, then it means we’re successful.”

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