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  PlanetArk 6 Apr 06
Poor Data Hides Crisis Facing Species - Scientists

CAPE TOWN - Animal and plant species are dying off rapidly around the world due to climate change, but scientists are struggling to monitor the decline due to a lack of data, top scientists said on Wednesday.

Scientists say just a fraction of the earth's plant and animal species have so far been identified, while millions more may have already been lost.

There was also little information of those identified. "Only about 1.75 million out of an estimated 10 million or more species have been identified and the information on less than 10 percent of all the collected specimens has been digitised," Philemon Mjwara, director-general of South Africa's department of science and technology, told a biodiversity meeting in Cape Town.

It was essential that scientists, governments and museums share information to help increase the understanding of what the changes linked to global warming could mean for species, he told the annual Global Biodiversity Information Facility conference.

The conference aims to help researchers share information across country borders to accelerate compiling an inventory of the world's plants, animals and other species.

"The monitoring is still growing (but) its need and importance is that biodiversity could have a huge impact from climate change ... we need to share more information and work on the other things we don't yet know," Mjwara told Reuters.

Martin Sharman, head of the biodiversity sector of the European Commission's Directorate General for Research, said the world was in a crisis, with catastrophic change slowly happening.

"We are in a period of huge change that we don't really notice," he said, adding it was estimated the earth was losing species 100 times or even a 1,000 times faster than before.
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