Population Assessment and Conservation of Rare and Threatened Plants Including Medicinal Herbs; Ethnobiology

""Aim: Conservation managers designate significant areas for shorebirds based on imperfect data. Significant wetlands for migratory shorebirds have usually been identified on the basis of whether they exceed certain thresholds, defined either by total abundance (usually 20,000 waterbirds) or percentage of a population (usually 1.0%). We evaluate the performance of existing criteria and determine if lowering thresholds would improve shorebird conservation without adding unreasonable numbers of significant sites.

Location: Australia.

Methods: We evaluated the best available data, which is used by managers to designate significant areas, to describe the effect of lowering thresholds on the number of significant sites identified and the number of shorebirds these sites support using a range of thresholds in existing criteria. We also investigated factors which may explain interspecific differences evident when lowering thresholds.

Results: When the threshold for total abundance was lowered from 20,000 to 2000 shorebirds, an additional 45 shorebird areas, holding 65% more shorebirds, were identified. When thresholds for the percentage of a population criterion were lowered from 1.0 to 0.1%, an additional 86 shorebird areas were identified which held 29% more shorebirds. The proportion of a species population counted within wetlands identified as significant by the application of criteria varied widely between species. The percentage of population criterion always identified a network of areas that included more individuals of each species than the total abundance criterion at all threshold levels tested. The percentage of species populations found in networks of significant areas showed greater increase as thresholds were lowered for species that were abundant, widespread and well represented at existing thresholds.

Main conclusions: Our results suggest lowering thresholds will substantially increase the number of shorebirds in identified significant areas. However, some species will remain under-represented, partly because of interspecific differences in distribution and inadequate sampling of some shorebird habitats."""

Ethnoecological knowledge refers to the local wisdom, innovations, traditional life style and practices of aboriginal communities. This knowledge also contributes a lot to understanding of conservation stata of culturally significant flora of a region. The present research work is the first one to focus on this particular aspect of cultural knowledge to assessing preliminary conservation status of 295 culturally significant plant species of district Tor Ghar. In such remote and less privileged areas interaction between plants and people is much stronger. Multistage random selection of 700 informants was made. The data was obtained through EPA, group discussion and semi structured interviews. The conservation status of all culturally significant plant species were assessed quantitatively by developing a new special mathematical relation that is CS = K (OC + AV + CE)/TF × RP. A scale was devised on the basis of CS value index and all 295 species were assigned to different IUCN categories. According to this classification 20 species were found critically endangered, 35 endangered, 56 vulnerable, 58 near threatened (rare) and 126 least concerned (secure). This categorization depicts a miniature of ethno-conservation of plants at local level. The current study leads to an enhanced understanding of cultural knowledge on mountain vegetation within the context of anthropogenic impacts and the role of indigenous communities in regional plant conservation strategies and future outlooks.

Taxonomic groups and ecoregions shape the “lenses” through which biodiversity is assessed and conserved. A historical bias toward vertebrates and vascular plants in the northern hemisphere underpins how global patterns of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems are perceived. Here, we focus on the hitherto overlooked non-vascular flora (liverworts and mosses) in the remote sub-Antarctic Magellanic ecoregion of southwestern South America.