Quantifying progress toward a conservation assessment for all plants

Area of Science:

• Botany
• Conservation Biology
• Biodiversity Informatics

Background:

• The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) aimed to assess all plant species by 2020.
• Plant conservation assessments are crucial for informing biodiversity protection efforts.
• A quantitative understanding of progress towards conservation targets is needed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantitatively measure progress towards the GSPC's plant conservation assessment target.
• To consolidate and standardize existing digital plant conservation assessments.
• To identify plant families requiring urgent assessment efforts.

Main Methods:

• Consolidated digitally available plant conservation assessments.
• Reconciled scientific names and assessment statuses to predefined standards.
• Analyzed data to determine the percentage of assessed and threatened plant species.

Main Results:

• Compiled 241,919 assessments for 111,824 land plant species.
• Assessed 21-26% of known plant species globally (73,081–90,321 species).
• Identified 27,148–32,542 threatened plant species and highlighted 80 underassessed plant families.

Conclusions:

• Despite significant progress, the majority of plant species remain unassessed.
• Urgent focus on underassessed families like Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, and Rubiaceae is needed.
• The accessible dataset (ThreatSearch) provides a baseline for future conservation actions and targets.