Eco-Art Competition 2022

Human impact is causing a lot of damage to our earth, but one of the greatest losses is our declining biodiversity. It's been declared that our activities are leading this planet into the 6th mass extinction, with the rate of dying species being at least a hundred times more than the background rate. Though there's a great deal of attention on endangered animals we often overlook endangered plants. Plants play key roles in our ecosystem and maintaining their genetic diversity is important to protecting them from disease. Not to mention we benefit a ton from plants. The World Wildlife Fund claims we harvest about 50,000 to 70,000 species of plants a year for use in medicine. But despite their importance, it's currently estimated that 40% of our plant species are at risk of going extinct, yet there is little movement to protect them. On display here is just a fraction of the plant species most at risk. I hope that spotlighting them in my piece will bring make my audience aware of the beauty we stand to lose.