ConservePlants: An integrated approach to conservation of threatened plants for the 21st Century

Abstract

Even though plants represent an essential part of our lives offering exploitational, supporting and cultural services, we know very little about the biology of the rarest and most threatened plant species, and even less about their conservation status. Rapid changes in the environment and climate, today more pronounced than ever, affect their fitness and distribution causing rapid species declines, sometimes even before they had been discovered. Despite the high goals set by conservationists to protect native plants from further degradation and extinction, the initiatives for the conservation of threatened species in Europe are scattered and have not yielded the desired results. The main aim of this Action is to improve plant conservation in Europe through the establishment of a network of scientists and other stakeholders who deal with different aspects of plant conservation, from plant taxonomy, ecology, conservation genetics, conservation physiology and reproductive biology to protected area's managers, not forgetting social scientists, who are crucial when dealing with the general public.

Land sharing between cultivated and wild plants: urban gardens as hotspots for plant diversity in cities

“…This potential for conservation is particularly interesting as community gardens are primarily established for food production (Corrigan 2011;Gregory et al 2016) and recreational reasons (Breuste and Artmann 2014), and suggests that the possibility for species conservation can be further heightened by raising awareness for biodiversity management through the conservation of wild growing plants. In Berlin, there are already initiatives and projects to involve citizen scientists into the propagation and cultivation of threatened plant species in gardens (Fišer et al 2021), which should be accompanied by conservation authorities and Botanical Gardens (Godefroid et al 2011;Lauterbach et al 2019). Thus, community gardens can present a system for reconciliation ecology: anthropogenic habitats that are modified to harbor a wide variety of species (Rosenzweig 2003).…”

Flora richness of a military area: discovery of a remarkable station of Serapias neglecta in Corsica

“…In situ conservation can take different forms: at the species level, it is possible to select the most vulnerable species and develop conservation programmes to improve the conservation status of these target species ( Guyot and Muracciole 1995 , Fenu et al 2020 , Fišer et al 2021 ). However, it is impossible to conserve all plant species through specific programmes, especially for funding and logistical reasons.…”