From towering coastal redwoods to dinosaur-era Wollemi pines and firs that make the perfect Christmas tree, even the most revered woody plants have so many problems.

But it turns out that losing some species isn’t just endangering local forests. It will threaten entire ecosystems, says new research.

Last year, the Global Assessment state of the world trees We found that a shocking third of all tree species are now endangered.

This equates to approximately 17,500 endemic tree species that are threatened with extinction.

This is more than double that of all endangered quadrupeds (mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles).

Some trees are so rare that only one known individual remains, like the solitary pine of Mauritius. Hyophorbe amalikaulis.

In a new paper, the same team of researchers state of the world trees The report issues a “warning to mankind” on the consequences of these losses and is endorsed by 45 scientists from 20 countries.

Marin Rivers, a conservation biologist at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and colleagues outline the many impacts of these losses on our economies, livelihoods and food.

Most of our fruits come from trees, and like many nuts and medicines, trade in non-wood products is worth about $88 billion.

In developing countries, 880 million people depend on wood for fuel and 1.6 billion live within 5 km (3 miles) of forests and depend on wood for food and income.

Collectively, trees contribute about $1.3 trillion to the global economy annually, but we destroy billions of trees each year, clearing vast tracts of land for agriculture and development.

Each tree is its own little world, filled with all kinds of unicellular and multicellular life forms, including other plants, fungi, bacteria, and animals. When a tree is lost, the entire world dies. They often form the support base for the entire life web around them.

In fact, half of the world’s flora and fauna depend on tree habitat.

“Habitat loss is often tree loss, and when you look at animal and bird extinction concerns, that’s at the root,” Rivers told Nature World News. “If you don’t take care of the tree, you can’t take care of all the other creatures out there.”

As with all life systems, the loss of diversity makes the whole jumble of life connections more fragile.

This suggests that less diversity means less diversity in immune responses, genes, and responses to environmental conditions, and the many threats that break through the complex web of interactions that are life on Earth. This is because it means that you are less likely to survive from

Some tree species offer unique interactions and cannot be replaced by others.

This includes the distinctive Dragon’s Blood Tree (dracaena cinnabari) Remnants from ancient Oligocene woodlands and host to many other plants and many other species that depend entirely on them, including the gecko that pollinates them.

So the extinction of one species can have a massive domino effect on everything else it interacts with, even if they are already rare.

Species dependent on declining forests have already declined by about 53% since 1970, with more forests around the world showing signs of increasing stress.

This doesn’t just affect other life trees with which it interacts.

Trees are also interwoven with the earth’s soil, atmosphere, and weather, cleaning the air, producing oxygen, and providing rain. They store three-quarters of the world’s accessible freshwater and more than half of the problematic carbon dioxide.

If enough trees are lost, the Earth’s carbon, water and nutrient cycles will be disrupted.

“We show that diverse forests store more carbon than monocultures,” Rivers said. Guardian.

“This applies to many ecological functions: not just carbon capture, but also providing habitat for animals, stabilizing soil, rescuing pests and diseases, and recovering from storms and inclement weather. Trees If we lose the diversity of all living things, we also lose the diversity of all living organisms: birds, animals, fungi, microbes, insects.”

Some tree species have gotten lucky and are able to take advantage of the rapid environmental changes we’ve caused. For example, tree species that stalk areas where fires have been extinguished. But many more are being destroyed by the same process.

Much needs to be done to combat this on a collective level, but we can all play our part by recognizing the importance of trees and fighting our own plant blindness. Initially, researchers noted that at a time when plants are needed more than ever, fewer people in the UK are receiving plant education than ever before.

Heading into the UN’s COP15 biodiversity conference this December, Rivers and colleagues urged leaders to better integrate trees into climate policy and provide stronger protection. We all have to think of trees.

This research plants, people, planets.