Wednesday, 23 October 2024 Research work by our colleagues from the Department of Biodiversity was successfully published in Scientific Data – a database of European vascular plant red lists

The diversity of vascular plant taxa in Europe is under threat. One of the first steps to ensure adequate conservation of organisms is to know their conservation status. 

National Red Lists are valuable tools for biodiversity conservation, providing information on how close a taxon is to extinction. However, there are still differences in the methods and implementation of these assessments across European countries, indicating gaps in conservation efforts at national and regional levels. To address these disparities, researchers from the Department of Biodiversity at UP FAMNIT have compiled and analyzed the latest national Red Lists of vascular plants in European countries, including some eastern Mediterranean countries.

As a result of this research, the Department of Biodiversity at UP FAMNIT has led the publication of 2 important scientific articles.

In the first paper, they present the analysis of the use of Red Lists by countries, i.e. what proportion of the countries’ flora is taken into account, to what extent the Red Lists are legally binding, which institutions oversee their compilation, how often they are compiled, what hinders their efforts to assess the risk of species extinction regularly, and so on. Please read about findings and conclusions here.

In the second paper, they have used the data from these European Red Lists to create a database of Red Lists of vascular plants. As the name suggests, it collects extinction risks for numerous European species and can allow us to understand not only national extinction risks but also risks at the European level. They anticipate that this database will be helpful to many researchers, policymakers and conservationists working to protect plant diversity in Europe. Read about the database and access the data here.

All these activities were developed as part of the COST Action ConservePlants.