SePPCon 2024: Regional & National Planning
SePPCon 2024: Regional & National Planning
Assessing Extinction Risk for the Flora of Eastern North America
Diana Soteropoulos*, Amanda Eberly, & Wes Knapp, NatureServe
NatureServe is a US based nonprofit dedicated to unlocking the power of science to guide biodiversity conservation. NatureServe and its Network of member programs gather and maintain a unique body of detailed scientific information on the location, condition, and conservation status of plants, animals, and ecosystems of the United States and Canada, NatureServe Conservation Status Ranks indicate relative extinction risk from “Critically Imperiled, globally” (G1) to “Secure, globally” (G5). These ranks inform conservation decisions in the United States and Canada. Updating plant taxonomy and maintaining a rank currency of 10 years is a formidable task. NatureServe has made significant strides in updating the taxonomy and ranks of the eastern North American flora. This has come via a major push to assess taxa without ranks and with outdated ranks through two recent workshops in conjunction with the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Southeast Plant Conservation Alliance and two projects funded by foundations targeting rare taxa in the Southeast US (BAND Foundation) and all taxa in New England (Manton Foundation). Without these recent efforts, many taxa in the eastern US would remain unranked and may be overlooked for conservation prioritization. Highlights from this recent work will be shared as well as future directions discussed.
Plant Conservation Advocacy in the United States
Leah Oliver*, Independent Botanist
Video start time: 8:52
The southeastern United States is one of the most botanically biodiverse regions in the country. Many species are experiencing multiple threats from invasive species, disease emergence to climate change. Protecting threatened plants is acutely challenging. While many plant conservationists experience and witness first-hand that plants receive less attention, funding and protection than animals, few can articulate why. Understanding the historical advocacy and legal challenges that plants face, will empower stakeholders to target novel opportunities to reduce the gap and effect change. This talk will examine some of the reasons why plants are treated differently than animal species, when it comes to conservation. The historical origins date back to the founding of the United States. A review of the history of legal protections, the current landscape and novel solutions will be explored. The major calls-to-action include equipping plant conservation stakeholders with facts that will enable effective communication, a proposal for a repeatable national level report to track progress and trends, and the establishment of a plant conservation policy center. A policy center solely focused on plant conservation would facilitate bidirectional communication with lawmakers, keep stakeholders informed, and allow increased protection and resources for plants.