Global strategy for plant conservation: inadequate in situ conservation of threatened flora in Spain

Abstract

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) seeks to assess the conservation status of the world vascular plants by 2020, and to guarantee that at least 75% threatened taxa are conserved in situ. A comprehensive evaluation of IUCN categories for 7269 Spanish vascular plants (GSPC Target 2), using distribution data and environmental niche models, is presented. A gap analysis to assess the percentage of threatened plants effectively conserved in situ (considering national parks, plant micro-reserves and recovery or conservation plans) was also conducted (Target 7). The result is that only 44.4% threatened species are subject to an adequate in situ protection. An appropriate management of additional natural protected areas towards the conservation of threatened plants would make Spain meet this threshold, but severe deficiencies should be corrected. The methodology presented here is proposed as a tool to assess the degree of achievement of GSPC targets. This procedure can be quickly implemented and allows an easy evaluation of the progress, as well as the pending tasks in a given period of time.

Keywords:

• environmental niche model
• Global Strategy
• Plant Conservation
• in situ conservation
• Red List
• Spain
• vascular plants

Acknowledgments

We thank Jordi López Pujol his invitation to contribute to this special issue. R. López and C. Cabal contributed to the early stages of this study. We greatly acknowledge several regional technicians and experts, particularly S. Fos, E. Laguna, E. Moragues, A. Saldaña, M.A. Carrión, J. Robles, C. Rodríguez-Hiraldo, J.A. Donate, D. Monescillo and J. Garmendia. D. Perea kindly provided the checklist corresponding to Cabañeros National Park when it was in press. Our colleagues S. Sharrock and D.C. Raimondo kindly resolved our questions about the GSPC targets, and the Ministry of Environment technicians D. Serrano and R. Gómez-Calmaestra provided useful insights on protected areas and their degree of effectiveness. We also thank an anonymous reviewer for the useful feedback provided. JCMS contributes to the Remedinal3 (S2013/MAE-2719) network of the Madrid region.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, Directorate General of Natural Environment. This article is an extended and updated version of a technical unpublished document delivered in 2013: Report on Targets 2 and 7 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation in relation to the Spanish vascular flora, MAGRAMA. PMR was supported by the BBSRC-Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Partnership during the preparation of this paper. DDM is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship by the Portuguese Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/100384/2014).