Botanical Monography in the Anthropocene

Unprecedented changes in the Earth's biota are prompting urgent efforts to describe and conserve plant diversity. For centuries, botanical monographs — comprehensive systematic treatments of a family or genus — have been the gold standard for disseminating scientific information to accelerate research. The lack of a monograph compounds the risk that undiscovered species become extinct before they can be studied and conserved. Progress towards estimating the Tree of Life and digital information resources now bring even the most ambitious monographs within reach. Here, we recommend best practices to complete monographs urgently, especially for tropical plant groups under imminent threat or with expected socioeconomic benefits. We also highlight the renewed relevance and potential impact of monographies for the understanding, sustainable use, and conservation of biodiversity.Fil: Grace, Olwen M.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Pérez-Escobar, Oscar A.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Lucas, Eve J.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Vorontsova, Maria S.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Lewis, Gwilym P.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Walker, Barnaby E.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Lohmann, Lúcia G.. Universidade de Sao Paulo; BrasilFil: Knapp, Sandra. Natural History Museum; Reino UnidoFil: Wilkie, Peter. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Sarkinen, Tiina. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Darbyshire, Iain. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Lughadha, Eimear Nic. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Monro, Alexandre. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Woudstra, Yannick. Universidad de Copenhagen; Dinamarca. Royal Botanic Gardens; Reino UnidoFil: Demissew, Sebsebe. Addis Ababa University; EtiopíaFil: Muasya, A. Muthama. University Of Cape Town; SudáfricaFil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Baker, William J.. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Reino UnidoFil: Antonelli, Alexandre. University of Oxford; Reino Unido. University Goteborg; Sueci

Building robust, practicable counterfactuals and scenarios to evaluate the impact of species conservation interventions using inferential approaches

Robust evaluation of the impact of biodiversity conservation actions is important not only for ensuring that conservation strategies are effective and maximise return on investment, but also to identify and celebrate successful conservation strategies. This evaluation can be retrospective (comparing the current situation to a counterfactual scenario) or forward-looking (comparing future scenarios with or without conservation). However, assessment of impact using experimental or quasi-experimental designs is typically difficult in conservation, so rigorous inferential approaches are required. Inferential assessment of impact is a key part of the new IUCN Green Status of Species, which greatly amplifies the need for standardised and practical species impact evaluation methods. Here, we use the Green Status of Species method as a base to review how inferential methods can be used to evaluate conservation impact at the species level. We identify three key components of the inferential impact evaluation process—estimation of scenario outcomes, selection of baseline scenario, and frame of reference—and explain, with examples, how to reduce the subjectivity of these steps. We propose a step-by-step guide, incorporating these principles, that can be used to infer scenario outcomes in order to evaluate past and future conservation impact in a wide range of situations, not just Green Status of Species assessments. We recommend that future non-experimental conservation interventions facilitate the process of evaluating impact by identifying the variable(s) that will be used to measure impact at the design stage, and by using conceptual models to help choose conservation actions most likely to have the desired impact

Assessing the cost of global biodiversity and conservation knowledge

Knowledge products comprise assessments of authoritative information supported by stan-dards, governance, quality control, data, tools, and capacity building mechanisms. Considerable resources are dedicated to developing and maintaining knowledge productsfor biodiversity conservation, and they are widely used to inform policy and advise decisionmakers and practitioners. However, the financial cost of delivering this information is largelyundocumented. We evaluated the costs and funding sources for developing and maintain-ing four global biodiversity and conservation knowledge products: The IUCN Red List ofThreatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the WorldDatabase of Key Biodiversity Areas. These are secondary data sets, built on primary datacollected by extensive networks of expert contributors worldwide. We estimate that US$160million (range: US$116–204 million), plus 293 person-years of volunteer time (range: 278–308 person-years) valued at US$14 million (range US$12–16 million), were invested inthese four knowledge products between 1979 and 2013. More than half of this financingwas provided through philanthropy, and nearly three-quarters was spent on personnelcosts. The estimated annual cost of maintaining data and platforms for three of these knowl-edge products (excluding the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems for which annual costs were notpossible to estimate for 2013) is US$6.5 million in total (range: US$6.2–6.7 million). We esti-mated that an additional US$114 million will be needed to reach pre-defined baselines ofdata coverage for all the four knowledge products, and that once achieved, annual mainte-nance costs will be approximately US$12 million. These costs are much lower than those tomaintain many other, similarly important, global knowledge products. Ensuring that biodi-versity and conservation knowledge products are sufficiently up to date, comprehensiveand accurate is fundamental to inform decision-making for biodiversity conservation andsustainable development. Thus, the development and implementation of plans for sustain-able long-term financing for them is critical

Quantifying and mapping species threat abatement opportunitiesto support national target setting

The successful implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020Global Biodiversity Framework will rely on effective translation of targets from global tonational level and increased engagement across diverse sectors of society. Species conserva-tion targets require policy support measures that can be applied to a diversity of taxonomicgroups, that link action targets to outcome goals, and that can be applied to both global andnational data sets to account for national context, which the species threat abatement andrestoration (STAR) metric does. To test the flexibility of STAR, we applied the metric to vascular plants listed on national red lists of Brazil, Norway, and South Africa. The STARmetric uses data on species’ extinction risk, distributions, and threats, which we obtainedfrom national red lists to quantify the contribution that threat abatement and habitatrestoration activities could make to reducing species’ extinction risk. Across all 3 coun-tries, the greatest opportunity for reducing plant species’ extinction risk was from abatingthreats from agricultural activities, which could reduce species’ extinction risk by 54% inNorway, 36% in South Africa, and 29% in Brazil. Species extinction risk could be reducedby a further 21% in South Africa by abating threats from invasive species and by 21% inBrazil by abating threats from urban expansion. Even with different approaches to red-listing among countries, the STAR metric yielded informative results that identified wherethe greatest conservation gains could be made for species through threat-abatement andrestoration activities. Quantifiably linking local taxonomic coverage and data collection toglobal processes with STAR would allow national target setting to align with global targetsand enable state and nonstate actors to measure and report on their potential contributionsto species conservation. habitat restoration, national red lists, species’ extinction risk, threat reduction, threatened species, vascular plantspublishedVersio

New Brazilian Floristic List Highlights Conservation Challenges

A comprehensive new inventory of Brazilian plants and fungi was published just in time to meet a 2010 Convention on Biological Diversity target and offers important insights into this biodiversity's global significance. Brazil is the home to the world's richest flora (40,989 species; 18,932 endemic) and includes two of the hottest hotspots: Mata Atlantica (19,355 species) and Cerrado (12,669 species). Although the total number of known species is one-third lower than previous estimates, the absolute number of endemic vascular plant species is higher than was previously estimated, and the proportion of endemism (56%) is the highest in the Neotropics. This compilation serves not merely to quantify the scale of the challenge faced in conserving Brazil's unique flora but also serves as a key resource to direct action and monitor progress. Similar efforts by other megadiverse countries are urgently required if the 2020 targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation are to be attained.Ministerio do Meio AmbienteMinisterio do Meio AmbienteCentro Nacional de Conservacao da FloraCentro Nacional de Conservacao da FloraNational Council for Scientific and Technological DevelopmentNational Council for Scientific and Technological DevelopmentBentham and Moxon TrustBentham and Moxon Trus

Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact.

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 separate but interlinked components: a standardized method (i.e., measurement against benchmarks of species' viability, functionality, and preimpact distribution) to determine current species recovery status (herein species recovery score) and application of that method to estimate past and potential future impacts of conservation based on 4 metrics (conservation legacy, conservation dependence, conservation gain, and recovery potential). We tested the framework with 181 species representing diverse taxa, life histories, biomes, and IUCN Red List categories (extinction risk). Based on the observed distribution of species' recovery scores, we propose the following species recovery categories: fully recovered, slightly depleted, moderately depleted, largely depleted, critically depleted, extinct in the wild, and indeterminate. Fifty-nine percent of tested species were considered largely or critically depleted. Although there was a negative relationship between extinction risk and species recovery score, variation was considerable. Some species in lower risk categories were assessed as farther from recovery than those at higher risk. This emphasizes that species recovery is conceptually different from extinction risk and reinforces the utility of the IUCN Green Status of Species to more fully understand species conservation status. Although extinction risk did not predict conservation legacy, conservation dependence, or conservation gain, it was positively correlated with recovery potential. Only 1.7% of tested species were categorized as zero across all 4 of these conservation impact metrics, indicating that conservation has, or will, play a role in improving or maintaining species status for the vast majority of these species. Based on our results, we devised an updated assessment framework that introduces the option of using a dynamic baseline to assess future impacts of conservation over the short term to avoid misleading results which were generated in a small number of cases, and redefines short term as 10 years to better align with conservation planning. These changes are reflected in the IUCN Green Status of Species Standard

Flora of Brazil Online: Can Brazil's botanists achieve their 2020 vision?

Abstract This paper seeks to provide an assessment of the prospects of delivering an online Flora of Brazil by 2020. Our approach is to evaluate the nature and extent of documentation of the Brazilian flora over the past 15 years before exploring whether existing botanical documentation and capacity is sufficient to support the production of a complete Flora over a five-year period. We address the following 'headline' questions: Has a high proportion of Brazilian species been described? Are collection densities sufficient to underpin a national Flora? Is there sufficient botanical expertise available to execute such a big project over a five-year period? Are there current taxonomic treatments that support the development of a national Flora? The results obtained show that the proportion of the flora estimated to have been described is high enough to be confident that those preparing Flora treatments will not be overwhelmed by the numbers of species new to science requiring description; the national average of 1.08 specimens per km2 is significant; relevant taxonomic treatments with a variety of different scopes and geographic scales are available; and, finally the botanical expertise available is demonstrated by the results presented in the List of Species of the Flora of Brasil

Flora of Brazil Online: Can Brazil's botanists achieve their 2020 vision?

Abstract This paper seeks to provide an assessment of the prospects of delivering an online Flora of Brazil by 2020. Our approach is to evaluate the nature and extent of documentation of the Brazilian flora over the past 15 years before exploring whether existing botanical documentation and capacity is sufficient to support the production of a complete Flora over a five-year period. We address the following 'headline' questions: Has a high proportion of Brazilian species been described? Are collection densities sufficient to underpin a national Flora? Is there sufficient botanical expertise available to execute such a big project over a five-year period? Are there current taxonomic treatments that support the development of a national Flora? The results obtained show that the proportion of the flora estimated to have been described is high enough to be confident that those preparing Flora treatments will not be overwhelmed by the numbers of species new to science requiring description; the national average of 1.08 specimens per km2 is significant; relevant taxonomic treatments with a variety of different scopes and geographic scales are available; and, finally the botanical expertise available is demonstrated by the results presented in the List of Species of the Flora of Brasil