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Terfezia arenaria (a desert truffle). © A. Rodríguez / www.trufamania.com
Congress on Fungal Conservation’ (Turkey, November 2013);
we also support the Arab Society for Fungal Conservation.
We have contributed to the Global Fungal Red List
Initiative, and have evaluated the conservation status of 30
ascomycetes (in addition to the desert truffles already
mentioned); mostly species associated with ash and elm
(trees with rapidly declining populations in Europe and
elsewhere). We held two workshops at the Congress in
Turkey; on raising awareness of fungi, and on preparing
assessments that are compatible with The IUCN Red List
(using desert truffles as an example).
In terms of education and outreach, we are adding
information about fungi to selected pages in the English
language version of Wikipedia, and lobbying to include fungi in
the National Curriculum for schools in England.
We would like to acknowledge the Mohamed Bin Zayed
Species Conservation Fund for its generous support of our
work on desert truffles.
We have a new structure for the current quadrennium with
two co-chairs, John Donaldson and Patrick Griffith; two vice
chairs, Cristina Lopez-Gallego and Michael Calonje; and
DeWet Bosenberg as the Red List Authority.
Planning for the current and future years is underway; we
continue to organize international meetings with the CSG
every three years, the next one scheduled for Colombia in
2015. A conference website was launched last year to
coordinate the conference. We are completing the Red List
Index based on the 2010 assessments and follow up. We are
also planning workshops for 2014 in the USA (Montgomery
Botanical Center) and Thailand (Nong Nooch Tropical Botanic
Garden) to prepare for the next IUCN Red List update in 2015.
All of this activity supports direct conservation
programmes and actions by CSG members. In that area we
are excited to report that three current Save Our Species
(SOS) funded projects are focused on cycads; in South Africa,
Belize, and Colombia. These projects are providing direct help
in the areas of enforcement, monitoring, and ex-situ
propagation techniques.
The CSG gratefully acknowledges SOS – Save Our
Species for this project support, and also Shenzhen Fairy
Lake Botanic Garden, SANBI, and Montgomery Botanical
Center for in-kind support of the activities mentioned above.
Dr John Donaldson and Dr Patrick Griffith
Co-chairs, Cycad Specialist Group
Zamia decumbens – Critically Endangered Cycad known from a limited area
in Belize. © Dr Chad Husby
David Minter
Chair, Cup Fungi, Truffles and Allies Specialist Group
Cycad Specialist Group
The Cycad Specialist Group (CSG) made great progress in
2013, and has further important progress planned for 2014
and 2015. Addressing the world’s most threatened group of
plants, the mission of the CSG is to coordinate worldwide
expertise in cycads in order to conserve these living
treasures. Recent progress meets this mission strategically
and directly.
A major accomplishment of the CSG last year was the
launch of the online ‘World List of Cycads’. At the most recent
CSG meeting (Shenzhen, China, 2011), it was acknowledged
that the accelerating scope and intensity of cycad study often
outpaces print publication. Thus, the CSG decided to
maintain an online World List of valid and accepted species,
updated in real time as the science of taxonomy improves.
This authoritative classification is essential to all other cycad
conservation action.
Other major advancements this year include the
publication of the CITES and Cycads: a user’s guide, (Kew,
2013), and Building living plant collections for conservation: a
guide for public gardens (BGCI, 2014) with Inputs and coauthorship
by CSG members.
50 IUCN species Annual Report 2013