Bamboo under extinction threat ( 2011/01/07)
   www.nature.com 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.
   One reason bamboo has been hit so hard is because of its distinctive cycle of mass flowering and death. Individuals in any one species tend to flower together, once every 10 to 100 years, and then die. If a forest is cleared at this time, the bamboo will not grow back.
   The report’s findings mean the many vulnerable species that rely almost entirely on bamboo for food and shelter, such as lemurs, giant pandas and mountain gorillas, face an even greater struggle for survival.
   It is bad news for humans too. Millions of people rely on wild bamboo for food, furniture and construction material. Worldwide, more than 2.5 billion people trade in or use bamboo. The international market in bamboo products is worth more than US$2 billion per year, as much as American beef.
   But it is not too late to do something about this," says Kapos. She hopes the World Conservation Union, the organization that officially lists species as endangered, will use the survey to help draw up future conservation policies.

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