Protecting a few key regions, comprising a relatively small amount of the Earth's land, may help to preserve the majority of threatened plant species, researchers from the United States and UK have said.

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Scientists at Duke University, North Carolina believe that by protecting certain regions covering a total of 17 percent of Earth's land, over two-thirds of its plant species could be spared from the threat of extinction.

Using computer algorithms and working with scientists employed by Microsoft in the UK, the scientists identified the smallest set of regions worldwide that could contain the largest numbers of plant species. The international team reported in the journal Science that preserving key regions could yield remarkable results, with potential benefits for animals and the wider environment.

"Our analysis shows that two of the most ambitious goals set forth by the 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity – to protect 60 percent of Earth's plant species and 17 percent of its land surface – can be achieved, with one major caveat," said Stuart L. Pimm, a professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University. "To achieve these goals, we need to protect more land, on average, than we currently do, and much more in key places such as Madagascar, New Guinea and Ecuador."

"Our study identifies regions of importance," he added. "The logical, and very challenging, next step will be to make tactical local decisions within those regions to secure the most critical land for conservation."

As most of the world's plant species are clustered together in certain species-rich regions, rather than distributed evenly across the planet, certain areas, including Central America, the Caribbean, the Northern Andes and a few regions in Africa and Asia have much higher concentrations of endemic species, protection of which, the Duke researchers feel, should be a conservation priority.

"Species endemic to small geographical ranges are at a much higher risk of being threatened or endangered than those with large ranges," elaborated Lucas N. Joppa, a conservation scientist at Microsoft Research's Computational Science Laboratory in Cambridge (UK) who also worked on the study. "We combined regions to maximize the numbers of species in the minimal area. With that information, we can more accurately evaluate each region's relative importance for conservation, and assess international priorities accordingly."

To identify which of Earth's regions contain the highest concentrations of endemic species, relative to their geographic size, the researchers analyzed data on more than 100,000 different species of flowering plants, compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

"The fraction of land being protected in high-priority regions increases each year as new national parks are established and greater autonomy is given back to indigenous peoples to allow them to manage their traditional lands," Pimm said. "We're getting tantalizingly close to achieving the Convention of Biological Diversity's global goals. But the last few steps remaining are huge ones."

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