The IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation in collaboration with the IUCN Global Species Programme organized a five-day workshop to establish an IUCN Red List of Monocotyledon Plants for the Mediterranean region. This workshop, the first of three to be held in the framework of this initiative, was hosted by UMR AMAP (Botany and Modelling of Plant Architecture and Vegetation) and took place at the CIRAD in Montpellier.

This assessment reviewed the conservation status of approximately 500 monocotyledon plants of the North-Western Mediterranean and the Balkans in accordance with the IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. The aim was to identify those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level in order to take appropriate conservation action to improve their status.

During the workshop 303 taxa were reviewed and assessed with the collaboration of plant experts from leading scientific institutions. For each Mediterranean monocot species, information was collated and a distribution map drawn according to the IUCN Red List Criteria in order to evaluate its relative extinction risk.

Saproxylic beetles assessment workshop

Another four-day workshop to assess the extinction risk of 550 species of saproxylic beetles in the Mediterranean region was organized by the IUCN Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation in collaboration with the Iberoamerican Biodiversity Centre (CIBIO) of the University of Alicante.

The workshop reviewed the conservation status of these beetles in accordance with the IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identified those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level in order to take appropriate conservation action to improve their status.

Saproxylic species are dependent during some part of their life cycle on the dead or dying wood of moribund or dead trees, or on wood-inhabiting fungi, or on the presence of other saproxylics. These beetles play a major role in nutrient cycling, since they are involved in decomposition processes in natural ecosystems. Many are also involved in pollination. Unfortunately, these species face many threats, such as habitat loss through logging, wood harvesting and the decline of old trees, as well as the lack of landscape management targeted at the replanting and recruitment of new generations of trees and the removal of dead trees.

These two Regional Red List workshops were part of an important regional initiative to conduct comprehensive extinction risk assessments of the more than 2,500 species of invertebrates and plants that occur in the Mediterranean region (more information about the initiative can be found HERE).

Developing Mediterranean Red Lists for these species groups will provide a comprehensive overview of their extinction risk and distributions in the Mediterranean, and will contribute to guiding policy decisions and conservation actions. These new assessments will supplement the existing Mediterranean Red Lists and will provide a detailed picture of the status of biodiversity in the Mediterranean region, thus helping to make the Mediterranean Red List a barometer of life.

The two meetings were conservation initiative funded by the MAVA Foundation.

For further information, please contact: Catherine Numa

Photo: Amorphocephala coronata - © A. Verdugo