The IUCN Centre of Mediterranean Cooperation in collaboration with the IUCN Global Species Programme organised a 5-day workshop to establish an IUCN Red List of Monocotyledon Plants for the Mediterranean region. This workshop, the second out of three that was held in the framework of this initiative, hosted by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and took place at the Athens University History Museum.

This assessment reviewed the conservation status of approximately 500 Monocotyledon plants belonging to the Eastern Mediterranean region according to the IUCN Red List regional guidelines. It identified those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level in order to take appropriate conservation actions to improve their status.

The purpose of the workshop was thus to review and complete, with the collaboration of the IUCN/SSC Mediterranean Plant Specialist Group and botanists from leading scientific institutions, the information on distribution, population, habitats and main threats for each plant species, and then apply the IUCN Red List Criteria to evaluate their relative extinction risk.

Developing Mediterranean Red Lists for these species group 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 region, thus, contributing to making the Mediterranean Red List a Barometer of Life.

The IUCN Red List assessment workshop of Mediterranean Monocotyledon Plants is a conservation initiative funded by the MAVA Foundation.

This Regional Red List workshop is part of an important regional initiative to conduct comprehensive extinction risk assessments of the more than 2,500 species of invertebrates and plants occurring in the Mediterranean region (more info about the initiative HERE).

For further information, please contact: Violeta Barrios

Photo: Iris Bismarckiana ©Alastair Rae