CNPS Rare Plant Inventory: Celebrating 50 years of innovation and advancement of rare plant stewardship and conservation in California

The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) maintains an inventory of California’s rare and endangered plants, where conservationists, researchers, consultants, and resource managers go daily to help educate landowners and public policy makers about the importance of rare plant stewardship and conservation. Starting as index card files of plant names and locations developed by famous geneticist G. Ledyard Stebbins in the late 1960’s, the CNPS Rare Plant Inventory (RPI) has advanced to become the most innovative, publicly available online program for promoting rare plant science and conservation in California. From the very start, CNPS took advantage of some of the most advanced technology available from the start, with the use of a Burroughs 6700 computer to produce the first RPI in 1974, followed by purchasing a microcomputer in 1980. While still in the process of publishing print copies, CNPS produced the Electronic Inventory in the 1990’s which was acclaimed as one of the most sophisticated natural heritage software programs in the world. Following the final print edition in 2001, the RPI went fully online with major innovations in 2010 and 2021, and is now a fully integrated web application that enables species maintenance functions to be performed in the same web-based program, ensuring the immediate release of the most up-to-date rare plant information to help inform conservation priorities. The current edition could not have been possible without major contributions from the State of California, the Center for Plant Conservation, the California Plant Rescue initiative, and the Pacific Southwest Region of the US Forest Service.