Plant species loss and communication

Abstract

December is a time of reflection on the challenges of the past year as well as on our hopes for the coming one. The experiences from the June Symposium in Brazil are still vibrating in our minds, and this issue is again devoted mainly to them. With pleasure, we are awaiting the forthcoming meeting in Palermo next year, and the welcome call is also included in this issue.The year 2016 is almost over and we are happy that it has been active and fruitful thanks to many of you who contributed to the events and activities organized by the IAVS and its working groups. We would also like to thank those of you who helped to make our Bulletin interesting by providing news, information and/or pictures. We wish all of you a peaceful holiday time and good luck for the coming year 2017. One of my favorite courses at the University is a series of lectures on conservation biology and its applications in practical nature conservation. A considerable time of this course is devoted to conveying the manifold values of biodiversity and to providing evidence for the disastrous loss of biodiversity around the globe, across different habitat types and organism groups. When I stress that northern Germanywhere my university is located -is no exception here and suffers from an unprecedented decline in plant species richness, many students remain skeptical: Hasn't nature conservation counteracted a further loss of species by creating lots of new reserves and by making large restoration efforts? Aren't there positive population trends of many large bird species (crane, geese, sea eagle) and mammals (wolves have established themselves again in Germany) in the country that contradict the statement of a declining biodiversity? Isn't climate change still of minor importance in temperate ecosystems compared to many other parts of the world? If there is a biodiversity crisis, why isn't it perceived as a crisis even by educated biology students? I believe that there are several reasons for this, and that we as vegetation scientists can and should contribute to change this perception in order to engage people in biodiversity issues and to prompt them to take action.One basic problem of the weak public perception of the biodiversity crisis is that humans are confronted with a large number of problems other than environmental, including political and social issues that often rank higher than biodiversity (Novacek 2008). In addition, over the last years, public attention has markedly shifted away from habitat and biodiversity loss to climate change and global warming. People simply question that biodiversity affects their health and well-being, ignoring or not realizing that plants and animals provide enormous benefits, for example in the form of food and pharmaceutical products. To reverse this trend and to raise the public awareness of the biodiversity crisis, we need to become better in communicating the findings of our ecological research to a wider audience, and in showing the critical role of plant species in providing different ecosystem servi...