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Medicinal Plant Specialist Group
The mission of the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group is to
increase global awareness of threats to the survival of
medicinal plant species, and to promote sustainable use and
conservation action.
In 2013, members of the group contributed to pursue
several on-going and new IUCN Red List assessment
initiatives; including regional assessments of European
medicinal plants (funded by the European Union), and national
assessments of medicinal plants in Lebanon (with funding from
the United Nations Development Programme) and India (in
collaboration with the Institute of Trans-Disciplinary Health
Sciences and Technology). We enlarged our Global Checklist
of Medicinal Plants to include nearly 30,000 taxa, and used it
to define a priority list of 1,500 species for global assessments
under a new IUCN Plants for People project partially funded by
the MAVA Foundation.
Group members also provided risk analyses of wildharvested
plant species and populations for private sector
companies as a service to the FairWild Foundation to support
implementation of the FairWild Standard for sustainable wild
collection. Members of the group continued to serve as
founding members of the FairWild Foundation’s Board of
Trustees and as members of the Foundation’s technical,
license, and communications committees. Much of this work
has been undertaken in collaboration with the TRAFFIC
Medicinal and aromatic plants trade programme.
The risk analysis methodology developed by MPSG
members has been included as one of nine steps in new
guidance for Parties to CITES, undertaking non-detriment
findings for perennial plants listed on Appendix II. Version 1.0
of this guidance, produced through a TRAFFIC/WWF Germany
project funded by the German Federal Agency for Nature
Conservation (BfN), published in 2014.
Danna J. Leaman
Chair, Medicinal Plant Specialist Group
Mediterranean Plant Specialist Group
2013 has been a very special year for our Specialist Group as
its extent of occurrence expanded from the Mediterranean
Islands (we were the Mediterranean Islands Plant Specialist
Group) to the whole Mediterranean area. This is quite a large
quantitative jump, with a very large number of taxa: 25,000
species, half of them being endemics to the area. We now
have 55 members, representing 21 countries. We are about to
Etlingera elatior (Jack) R.M.Sm. © D.J. Leaman
Ebenus cretica from Crete, Greece. © Bertrand de Montmollin
form a new thematic and geographic sub-group, The
Moroccan Plant and Livelihoods Sub-Group, with about 20
members, with the aim of developing species conservation in
Morocco, together with supporting community development
initiatives. A new and independent Red List Authority for the
Mediterranean Plants was created and chaired by Errol Vela,
based in Montpellier, France. It will validate IUCN Red List
assessments carried out in the Mediterranean, and as this
number increases, this will be a real challenge.
In 2013, we prepared, together with Plantlife and the
IUCN’s Centre for Mediterranean Cooperation, a project called
“Conserving wild plants and habitats for people in the south
and east Mediterranean”. This project, submitted to the MAVA
Foundation for funding, will strengthen the significance of
Important Plant Areas as tools for biodiversity conservation
involving plant species and habitats; directly contributing to
regional and national decision-making. Our members were
also involved in the programme “Ensuring the survival of
Endangered plants in the Mediterranean Islands” (also funded
by MAVA) and we plan to prepare, together with the existing
team managed by Kew Gardens, a second phase for this
project.
In our strategy, we plan to prepare the ‘TOP 100
Mediterranean Plants’, continuing our work with ‘The Top 50
Mediterranean Island Plants’, and to contribute to the
implementation of IUCN Knowledge Products, specifically The
IUCN Red List and hopefully The Red List of Ecosystems. We
are also excited to be associated with the defining criteria of a
‘Key Biodiversity Area’; we believe this will drive significant
support for plant conservation, as Important Plant Areas did.
We are very concerned by the difficulties faced by our
members and colleagues in several South and East
Mediterranean countries, and hope that it will soon be easier
for them to work in the field.
Bertrand de Montmollin
Chair, Mediterranean Plant Specialist Group
Specialist Groups, Task Forces and Red List Authorities
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