European Red List of Vascular Plants - European Commission

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Raise the profile of CWR as they are often
overlooked as an element of biodiversity, ensuring
that they are systematically conserved and that the
conserved germplasm is made available to the user
stakeholder community.
7.2 Application of project outputs
This European Red List of Vascular Plants is part of
a wider project aimed at comprehensively assessing
several taxonomic groups (mammals, amphibians,
reptiles, freshwater fish, freshwater molluscs, dragonflies,
butterflies), and selected beetles and terrestrial molluscs.
In conjunction with the data on European birds published
by BirdLife International (BirdLife International
2004a,b), the European Red List of Vascular Plants
provides key resources for decision-makers, policymakers,
resources managers, environmental planners
and NGOs. It has gathered large amounts of data on the
population, ecology, habitats, threats and recommended
conservation measures for each species assessed. These data
are freely available on the IUCN Red List website (www.
iucnredlist.org), on the European Commission website
(http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/conservation/
species/redlist) and through paper publications (see the
list of European Red Lists published at the end of this
report).
This Red List is a dynamic tool that will evolve with time
as species are reassessed according to new information
or situations. It is aimed at stimulating and supporting
research, monitoring and conservation action at local,
regional and international levels, especially for threatened,
Near Threatened and Data Deficient species.
Each species assessment lists the major threats affecting
the specific plant as well as conservation measures in place
or needed. This will be useful to inform the application
of conservation measures for each species. The outputs of
this project can be applied to inform policy, to identify
priority sites and species to include in research and
monitoring programmes and to identify internationally
important areas for biodiversity. It also contributes to
broaden the coverage of plants on the global IUCN
Red List as many species assessed during this project are
endemic to the European region.
7.3 Future work
As this European Red List of Vascular Plants covers only
about 8% of Europe’s flora, we are only at the starting
point of understanding the threat status of European
plants. With potentially at least 18,000 more species to
be assessed, careful planning is needed to prioritise further
groups of plants. There are several possibilities to increase
the coverage of the European Red List. One would be
to continue identifiying groups of special interest such
as medicinal plants due to their importance for human
survival and potential overexploitation. Or grassland
species as overgrazing and the lack of grazing have already
been identfied as major threats to other plant species and
because a loss of traditional land use and agricultural
intensification can be observed throughout Europe. Plant
species restricted to mountains might also be of interest,
as they are likely to be particularly affected by climate
change in the near future.
Another strategy would be to pre-identify potentially
threatened species and carry out full Red List assessments
of those. The list of threatened European plants compiled
by BGCI (Sharrock and Jones 2009), identified 1,917
priority taxa and should be compared with the list of
species in this project. Assessing those species would be
an excellent addition to the current Red List as it would
ensure that the most threatened species are included
and the additional documentation required for a red list
assessment could improve the application of adequate
conservation measures for those species. Another option
is the RapidList Tool which could be applied to all known
plant species that have not been assessed and help identify
which ones are potentially threatened and would require
a full Red List assessment. There is a need to extend the
application of the Red List Categories and Criteria to
a greater number of CWR species in Europe as well as
ephemeral wetland species and to re-evaluate the species
assessed as Data Deficient in this study.
It will be difficult to identify the ideal way forward which
will also be determined by available financial resources
and donor interest. But funding is the key to get an
overview of the state of Europe’s flora and to fulfil Target
2 of the European Strategy for Plant Conservation (Planta
Europa 2008).
Through the process of gathering and compiling plant
data across Europe, several knowledge gaps have been
identified. There are in particular significant geographical
and taxonomical biases in the quality and quantity of data
available on the distribution and status of species. The
importance of intra-specific genetic diversity has been
stressed in this report but the IUCN Red List Categories
and Criteria currently have a limited application
regarding the assessment of threat to genetic diversity.
One possibility would be the assessment of distinct
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