AboutOrchids

With today’s change of season, it seems appropriate to take an apocalyptic tone. While the latest end-of-the-world fad will pass with tomorrow’s sunrise, many plant and animal species are facing the real thing.  Climate change has begun, a danger not only to orchids, but to every species on the planet. Sadly, climate change is only the latest threat to orchids. Habitat destruction, over-collection of wild plants, pollution, and invasive species also continue their heavy tolls.

While some of the world’s 30,000 orchid species have healthy, stable populations in the wild, many others are rare, endangered, or already extinct. The world’s largest and most diverse flower family ranges from arctic orchids to a brilliant Masdevallia native to a single Bolivian valley, to a large, purple Lady Slipper, unknown to science til 2001. New discoveries still happen all the time, like this beautiful Coelogyne just discovered in Thailand, which is already endangered by habitat destruction along the Mekong Delta. The extinction of any species is a loss to that ecosystem, and a loss to future human generations. Some threatened ecosystems may collapse entirely, meaning the loss of hundreds of species at a time, as is feared for places like the cloud forests of the Colombian Andes.

The Mayans never predicted an apocalypse, but we are, indeed, experiencing a warming planet. The longer we wait to tackle this problem, the harder it will be. It’s easy to feel depressed, overwhelmed, and defeated, but there are many great groups fighting to save orchids and all the species which are the earth’s true treasure. I’ve highlighted many of these groups in Conservation posts, and there are many more around the world. Below is a short list of effective environmental organizations. They are worthy of your support, financially and otherwise. It’s not too late to help them stave off an orchid apocalypse.

• American Orchid Society
• Australian Orchid Foundation
• Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation
• Center for Conservation of Amazonian Flora
• Greenpeace
• Nature Conservancy
• Orchid Conservation Alliance
• Orchid Conservation Coalition
• Orchid Conservation International
• Royal Horticultural Society

Explore posts in the same categories: Conservation, In the News, Photos

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2012 at 6:30 am and is filed under Conservation, In the News, Photos.

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