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Seriously folks, get it right

Nearly a third of the world’s trees are at risk of extinction from threats including logging and agriculture, a major new report has found.

There are more than twice as many threatened trees than at risk birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles combined, according to the report from Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI).

This is not true, not true at all.

The first major assessment of the state of the world’s trees found that 17,500 species are at risk of extinction, out of 58,497 worldwide.

That might be.

The number of trees is rising as humanity’s farming footprint shrinks. The number of species might reduce, true, but the number of trees, no.

9 thoughts on “Seriously folks, get it right”

  1. I don’t understand the “than … as” construction; it seems muddled.Does she mean “twice as many more … than” (i.e. at least three times as many) or “twice as many … as”?

  2. The correct comparison is the decline of tree types to betting shops. Or is it bees to convenience stores. I can’t keep up.

  3. @ JJ
    I don’t understand the “than … as” construction

    It makes more sense with a hyphen between at and risk: at-risk birds etc
    In other words, twice as many trees as all the threatened birds etc all together.

  4. The first major assessment of the state of the world’s trees found that 17,500 species are at risk of extinction,…
    In cataloguing the trees, they found not many examples of 17,500 species. Whether these are naturally rare, fast growing but short lived or flourish in inaccessible areas is unknown. Because this is the first major assessment. So whether they are getting rare or not is unknown, and it is anyone’s guess if they are in danger of extinction.

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