General threats include climate change and habitat loss to development and agriculture.
Where medicinal plants are harvested from the wild rather than cultivated, they are subject to both general and specific threats. General threats include climate change and habitat loss to development and agriculture. A specific threat is over-collection to meet rising demand for medicines.[130] A case in point was the pressure on wild populations of the Pacific yew soon after news of taxol's effectiveness became public.[43] The threat from over-collection could be addressed by cultivation of some medicinal plants, or by a system of certification to make wild harvesting sustainable.[130] A report in 2020 by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew identifies 723 medicinal plants as being at risk of extinction, caused partly by over-collection.[131][114]