Southeast Asia’s oak trees highly threatened as report warns of lack of protection

The Morton Arboretum evaluated 54 threatened or data-deficient oak species native to Southeast and East Asia and found 46 of them under very high or high human pressure across more than half of their range, largely from rubber, palm, and pulp plantations.

Vietnam holds the largest share of at-risk species, including 15 found nowhere else, with three of the region's four oak biodiversity hotspots sitting in the Annamite mountains it shares with Laos and Cambodia.

Protection on paper is thin: every surveyed species has 40% or less of its native range inside protected areas, ten have under 10%, and only 14 of the 54 exist in botanic garden collections. Of sixteen critically endangered species, exactly one has a backup copy anywhere.

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