'We are staring down the barrel': Urgent warning we could lose up to HALF of future medicines

Scientists have warned that humanity is "staring down the barrel" with half of future medicines potentially being lost due to the extinction of plant species.

Half of species that flower are threatened (over 100,000) and around 77 per cent of all those that are yet to be described by science are at risk. Many plants are going extinct between the time they are first discovered to when they are catalogued - this takes roughly 16 years on average.

It is understood that the main cause of these extinctions is habitat loss resulting from deforestation or the construction of dams which flood river areas upstream. Conservation analyst Dr Matilda Brown said climate change is "certainly on the horizon" but it is difficult to measure it as a threat.

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Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, who published the findings in a new report called State of the World's Plants and Fungi, called for all newly described species to be treated as threatened unless proven otherwise. Dr Brown explained: “We’re looking at over 100,000 species that are threatened – that’s more than the total number of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, all of our vertebrates put together.

“And when we consider that nine out of 10 of our medicines come from plants, what we’re potentially staring down the barrel of is losing up to half of all of our future medicines. So this isn’t just a big number if you’re a plant. It’s a big number in terms of potential impacts for humanity.”

A variety of new species are vulnerable to extinction