A Common Approach to the Conservation of Threatened Island Vascular Plants: First Results in the Mediterranean Basin

Abstract

The Mediterranean islands represent a center of vascular plant diversity featuring a high rate of endemic richness. Such richness is highly threatened, however, with many plants facing the risk of extinction and in need of urgent protection measures. The CARE-MEDIFLORA project promoted the use of ex situ collections to experiment with in situ active actions for threatened plants. Based on common criteria, a priority list of target plant species was elaborated, and germplasm conservation, curation and storage in seed banks was carried out. Accessions were duplicated in the seed banks of the partners or other institutions. Germination experiments were carried out on a selected group of threatened species. A total of 740 accessions from 429 vascular plants were stored in seed banks, and 410 seed germination experiments for 283 plants species were completed; a total of 63 in situ conservation actions were implemented, adopting different methodological protocols. For each conservation program, a specific monitoring protocol was implemented in collaboration with local and regional authorities. This project represents the first attempt to develop common strategies and an opportunity to join methods and methodologies focused on the conservation of threatened plants in unique natural laboratories such as the Mediterranean islands.

From global to local scale: where is the best for conservation purpose?

“…Our study demonstrated that the conservation status of a plant globally considered endangered could notably vary at small spatial scale and suggested that conservation efforts must be supported by local analysis more than global investigation. Such evidence leads us to confirm that the priorities of conservation should vary at the small local level (Fenu et al 2020), since a population could need different conservation measures depending on the peculiar local conditions.…”

“…Recent studies indicated that the conservation needs vary at the small local level in the Mediterranean territories since a plant species could need different conservation attentions depending on the particular conditions of the locality on which it grows (Fenu et al 2020), and thus, the local demographic trends should be the main guide to plan conservation measures at the restricted local scale. Consequently, the pivotal question is to know whether having data and general assessments on a threatened species are (or not) determinant to identify effective conservation measures for such species.…”

So Uncommon and so Singular, but Underexplored: An Updated Overview on Ethnobotanical Uses, Biological Properties and Phytoconstituents of Sardinian Endemic Plants

“…This approach may be pursued for endemic plants that require conservation efforts to prevent or mitigate the extinction risk. As recently demonstrated, the multiplication in nursery for several Mediterranean threatened endemic plants was an easy procedure, not cost-expensive and a practicable solution to obtain a large number of new individuals for several uses [16,256].…”

“…Considering that a large number of medicinal and aromatic plants utilized all over the world are threatened [251] and two thirds of them are directly collected in the wild, it is necessary to promote and plan a rational exploitation of the plant biodiversity as a source of new bioactive substances. This observation is even more true for the endemic species, since they are particularly sensitive due to their restricted distribution and the small and often fragmented population size [15][16][17][252][253][254]. Thus, additional routes for resupply plant material need to be considered and, among the feasible strategies, the ex situ cultivation of threatened medicinal plants represents an encouraging protective approach in order to reconcile the conservation needs with research in the pharmaceutical field [19,255].…”

“…In this context, the Mediterranean Basin deserves particular interest, since it is widely recognized as one of the hot spots of terrestrial biodiversity [13][14][15]. This area, which corresponds to 2% of the world's surface, is characterized by a high rate of endemism, with approximately 60% of all native taxa being Mediterranean endemics, and half of which correspond to endemic sensu stricto [13,16,17]. Nevertheless, this endemic plant richness is irregularly distributed [13,16,18]; in particular, endemic plant diversity occurs on the large Mediterranean islands and archipelagos that represent the principal centers of diversity having an endemism rate of more than 40%, particularly due to the restricted range of most of their flora [16,19].…”