Prioritizing trees for global conservation action: BGCI’s tree conservation agenda

Abstract

Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) is a global voice for plant conservation via its worldwide network of botanic gardens and partners. Tree conservation has been a strong focus of BGCI’s program for many years. In collaboration with Fauna & Flora International, BGCI runs the Global Trees Campaign (GTC, www.globaltrees.org), the only international program dedicated to saving the world’s threatened tree species. Through the GTC, we prioritise and protect the trees of greatest conservation concern, and improve and promote tree conservation action globally. As a foundation of these efforts, BGCI is developing a world list of trees, GlobalTreeSearch, which currently contains over 55,000 accepted species. GlobalTreeSearch will be complete to species level and geo-referenced to country level by the end of 2016. GlobalTreeSearch will underpin GTC activities and provide critical support for conservation, restoration, forestry and agroforestry worldwide. BGCI hosts the secretariat of the IUCN/SSC Global Tree Specialist Group (GTSG), a network of over 80 specialists who, working in their own institutions, carry out red listing of the world’s trees. By 2020, the GTSG will leverage its global membership and expertise to ensure that we have conservation assessments for all of the world’s tree species in the Global Tree Assessment. Red list assessments will be made available through published reports focusing on particular families or regions, and will be published onto the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (www.iucnredlist.org). The Global Tree Assessment will enable identification of tree species at greatest risk of extinction. These species are priorities for conservation action.

Parent Publication

• Gene conservation of tree species—banking on the future. Proceedings of a workshop.

Citation

Shaw, K.; Rivers, M.; Beech, E. 2017. Prioritizing trees for global conservation action: BGCI’s tree conservation agenda. In: Sniezko, Richard A.; Man, Gary; Hipkins, Valerie; Woeste, Keith; Gwaze, David; Kliejunas, John T.; McTeague, Brianna A., tech. cords. 2017. Gene conservation of tree species—banking on the future. Proceedings of a workshop. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-963. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 37-38.