Wild coffee plants, Christmas and chocolate trees poorly protected: Study

A wide range of wild plants used for food, medicine, shelter, fuel, livestock forage and other valuable purposes are poorly protected, according to a study.

These include wild populations of firs used for Christmas trees, the original types of kitchen-cupboard staples like vanilla, chamomile, cacao and cinnamon, wild relatives of crops like coffee, and plants used by bees to make honey, said researchers from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia.

A new way of measuring plant conservation shows that less than 3 per cent of the 7,000 evaluated species are presently classified as "low priority" or "sufficiently conserved."