News report:

• https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/rare-plant-hunters-race-against-time-save-risk-species
• Rare-plant hunters race against time to save at-risk speciesOosthoek, Sharon. “Rare-Plant Hunters Race against Time to Save at-Risk Species.” Science News for Students, 7 Feb. 2019, www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/rare-plant-hunters-race-against-time-save-risk-species.

In the news report, answer:

• The source of the article
  • Science News for Students
  • SHARON OOSTHOEK
• The Questions: What/Who/Why/When/Where/How
  • What(the article tells us)
    • What the article addresses is the amount of rare plant life we are losing due to human development/climate change, etc. She speaks about the rare Alula plant which is only located only on the islands of Hawaii. The Alula was a very common plant before aggressive human development and animal domestication. Humans destroyed large amounts of lands containing these plants and with that brought pigs goats and rats which munched away at a lot of the plant life. Along with that other foreign(not native), plants/crops brought over out competed them.
    • A big factor in the alula plant disappearance is due to the diminishing fabulous green sphinx moth. This is the plant’s natural pollinator but due to the lands cleared for human development and the domesticated animals brought over here there are no longer enough plants for them to pollinate and therefore they have declined in numbers as well.
    • The only way for these plants to live is by us pollinating them, or else they will die off.
      • Did this by hand. “They would dip small paint brushes into the pollen of some greenhouse alula flowers and then dabbing it onto the stigmas of other alula flowers”.
    • What she also talked about was the Brewer spruce which is found in northwest North America only and are considered one of these rarest trees in the world. The biggest danger to the Brewer spruce is wildfires and climate change. There are only 6 specific places on earth to find these trees and they all happened to be in Oregon.
    • Along with this, there are no laws of protection for the Brewer spruce and therefore the only reason these trees are still around is because of their isolated growing location.
    • Was also mentioned to be a survivor of the glacial period 10,000 years ago.

• • Who
    • This affects all of us because soon there won’t be diverse ecosystems which means fewer animals, food, and resources.
  • Why(bigger picture)
    • It’s happening because people just don’t realize what are rare plant species and what aren’t. Also, many people don’t interact with nature that intensely to be able to identify such species. Self-interest drives many people and they don’t care about what plants they are destroying. According to a report from the Royal Botanic Gardens 1 in 5 of the world’s plants are at risk of extinction.
    • Humans development/climate change/wildfires.
  • When
    • This report was written February 7th, 2019, but does, in fact, use some information founded by rare plant hunters from 2016-2017
  • Where
    • Northern Oregon and the islands of Hawaii.
  • How(how it affects us)
    • Due to human development and the destruction of natural habitats.
• Impact of the event or finding / Relevance to society
  • The reason this is so important is that if we lose the Brewer spruce, Alula, and other rare species we could lose possible medical discoveries. Throughout history, we have seen plants used as a source of medicine and if they disappear we will never find out what they could have cured. Along with that plants are at the bottom of the food chain which means other, bigger organisms eat them and so on. If these plants are in abundance animals won’t be able to eat which then affects the whole ecosystem.
• Relevance to the course
  • This connects well to our course because it brings in the idea of system thinking. For example when you take one part of the system out(here it’s plants) the rest of the system will be affected and might even collapse.
• Any pertinent questions raised by the story