Abstract
Evidence-based assessments of extinction risk are established tools used to inform the conservation of plant species, and form the basis of key targets within the framework of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). An overall picture of plants threat assessments is challenging due to the use of a variety of methodologies and range in scope from global to subnational. In this study, we quantify the state of progress in assessing the extinction risk of all land plants, determine the key geographic and taxonomic gaps with respect to our understanding of plant extinction risk, and evaluate the impact of different sources and methodologies on the utility of plant assessments. To this end, we have analyzed a cleaned dataset compiled from IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and Regional Red Lists. We reveal that there are assessments available for 89,810 distinct species or 25% of all accepted land plant species. However unlike with other major organismal lineages the bulk of the plant species assessments are derived from Regional Red Lists, and not the Global IUCN Red List. We demonstrate that this bias towards regional assessments results in distinct taxonomic and geographic strengths and weaknesses, and we identify substantial taxonomic and geographic gaps in the assessment coverage. With species that have been assessed in common at both global and regional levels, we explore the implications of combining threat assessments from different sources. We find that half of global and regional assessments do not agree on the exact category of extinction risk for a species. Regional assessments assign a higher risk of extinction; or underestimate extinction risk with almost equal frequency. We conclude with recommended interventions, but support the suggestion that all threat assessments should be pooled to provide more data and broaden the scope of threat assessments for monitoring progress towards GSPC targets.
Highlights
At the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) it was widely accepted that the proposed 2010 Biodiversity target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss had not been met (Balmford et al 2005; Walpole et al 2009; Butchart et al 2010; Brummitt et al 2015)
Threatened are global post-1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN-RL) assessments). This is biased by a focus on the digitisation of more recently published Regional Red Lists, but represents the best assessment of digitised data so far. 89,810 unique species are covered by those 95,622 species-level assessments
We have found that RRL assessments are increasing at a rate much faster than global IUCN-RL assessments of plant species
Summary
At the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) it was widely accepted that the proposed 2010 Biodiversity target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss had not been met (Balmford et al 2005; Walpole et al 2009; Butchart et al 2010; Brummitt et al 2015). In response to the CBD, a plant-specific program called the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) (Wyse Jackson and Kennedy 2009) set sixteen targets for the conservation of plant species by the year 2020 (Paton and Lughadha 2011). Of these sixteen targets, three GSPC targets make specific reference to threatened plant species. GSPC Target 8 requires that at least 75% of threatened plant species are held in ex situ collections, preferably in the country of origin, with at least 20% available for recovery and restoration programs (Paton and Lughadha 2011). Gains towards GSPC Target 2 are required before progress towards GSPC Target 7 and GSPC Target 8 can be meaningfully measured and monitored
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