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.
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.