Lions have been dubbed the king of the jungle, but one could argue the real royalty are the trees, the massive woody beasts that hold down the land and root the web of life that teems around them. In Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America), which hosts 10% of all plant life on Earth despite covering only 0.5% of the planet’s land surface, nearly half of all tree species are in trouble. Of the 4,046 known tree species found only in Mesoamerica, 1,867, or 46%, are threatened with extinction, according to a new study published in the journal Plants, People, Planet. The research represents the first comprehensive assessment of Mesoamerican trees. The study was part of the Global Tree Assessment, a decade-long initiative to evaluate the conservation status of all the world’s tree species. Researchers used the standards of the IUCN Red List, which tracks how close species are to disappearing worldwide. The IUCN Red List categorizes species into nine groups, ranging from not evaluated to extinct, by considering factors such as population decline, habitat loss, and population size. Before this assessment, less than 20% (700) of the tree species of the region had been assessed on the IUCN Red List before 2019. Fungi in Costa Rica. Through their entire life cycle and beyond, tropical trees host an abundance of life. Photo by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.com. “It’s an important study — essentially a clarion call for conserving endangered tree species in Mesoamerica,” William Laurance, a tropical ecologist at James…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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