Hotspots. The Last Hope

Our planet is abundant with life. However in some places where there is an especially large variety of animal and plant species there is also a high level of habitat destruction. These are areas that demand special protection: the “HOTSPOTS” of biodiversity. For years, at least three species of plants or animals are being driven to extinction every day. This terrible process of annihilation is known as “The Great Extinction” and it threatens all life on our planet.

Scientists have found a solution: we must preserve certain areas that have been recognised as HOTSPOTS of biodiversity. These areas contain about 70 percent of the living species of plants and animals on earth. Each HOTSPOT is a natural sanctuary, a remnant of the paradise that once was the Earth.

There are two criteria which make a place a biodiversity HOTSPOT:

To be classified as a HOTSPOT, a place should be home to more than 0.5 percent (i.e. 1,500) of the world’s endemic vascular plant species.

Only a place that is highly-threatened can be designated as a HOTSPOT, which means that it must have already lost at least 70 percent of its surface area. In fact, in the past, all the HOTSPOTS combined amounted to about 15.7 percent of the Earth’s surface. Today, that figure has been reduced to 2.3%.

HOTSPOTS are diffuse border territories spread across the globe. We will visit five of the most representative HOTSPOTS.