Malin C Rivers

Botanic Gardens Conservation International , Richmond, United Kingdom

Societal Impact Statement Conserving frankincense trees (Boswellia) is crucial for both ecological and socio‐economic reasons. Surveying these trees in the field and using remote sensing unmanned aerial vehicles in the Socotra Archipelago, we found that Socotran frankincense trees are threatened by forest fragmentation, overgrazing, and increasingl...

There is a biodiversity crisis, and to prevent extinctions the most important sites to be effectively conserved must be identified. Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) include sites of importance for species survival. Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) sites, a subset of KBAs, contain ≥95% of the population of highly threatened species. Currently, only 4...

Aim: Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the follow...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 16/05/2024.

Premise The GlobalTree Portal, hosted by Botanic Gardens Conservation International, provides access to information on the approximately 58,000 tree species worldwide. Included in the GlobalTree Portal is the Conservation Action Tracker, a dynamic and collaborative database to identify and monitor conservation actions for tree species globally. Me...

Syzygium setosum (King) I.M. Turner (Myrtaceae), a poorly known peat swamp tree endemic to Peninsular Malaysia, is recorded for the first time in Sumatra, Indonesia. This study was conducted based on morphological characters examined on herbarium specimens of the taxon preserved at various herbaria pertinent to the Southeast Asian flora. The descri...

Biodiversity loss is a major global challenge and minimizing extinction rates is the goal of several multilateral environmental agreements. Policy decisions require comprehensive, spatially explicit information on species’ distributions and threats. We present an analysis of the conservation status of 14,669 European terrestrial, freshwater and mar...

What grows where? Knowledge about where to find particular species in nature must have been key to the survival of humans throughout our evolution. Over time, and as people colonised new land masses and habitats, interactions with the local biota led to a wealth of combined traditional and scientific wisdom about the distributions of species and th...

Trees are of exceptional ecological importance, playing a major functional role in the world's ecosystems, while also supporting many other plants, animals and fungi. The conservation status of tree species is therefore of key importance to planning management strategies and prioritising actions. Through the Global Tree Assessment, we now have know...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 04/05/2023.

Societal Impact Statement Plants are fundamental to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and are key to human livelihoods. To protect plant diversity, systematic approaches to conservation assessment are needed. Many nations have legislation or other policy instruments that seek to protect biodiversity (including plants), and species‐level assessment...

Developing strategies that enhance the incorporation of rare and threatened flora into ecosystem restoration is urgently needed to capitalise on the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. We outline six major challenges that impede the widespread use of rare and threatened flora in restoration: (1) a lack of information about threatened sp...

Madagascar's biota is hyperdiverse and includes exceptional levels of endemicity. We review the current state of knowledge on Madagascar's past and current terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by compiling and presenting comprehensive data on species diversity, endemism, and rates of species description and human uses, in addition to presenting...

Madagascar's unique biota is heavily affected by human activity and is under intense threat. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the conservation status of Madagascar's terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity by presenting data and analyses on documented and predicted species-level conservation statuses, the most prevalent and relevan...

The interlinked biodiversity crisis and challenge of global climate change cannot be addressed without the management of tree species. It is crucial that we use the information now available as a result of the Global Tree Assessment to manage, conserve and restore threatened tree species and tree diversity. With over 17,500 tree species now known t...

Trees play vital roles in many of the world's ecosystems while providing many benefits to people. New evidence indicates that a third of tree species are threatened with extinction, representing a tree extinction crisis. Here we demonstrate how tree species extinction will lead to the loss of many other plants and animals and significantly alter th...

Societal Impact Statement Trees play vital roles in many of the world's ecosystems while providing many benefits to people. New evidence indicates that a third of tree species are threatened with extinction, representing a tree extinction crisis. Here we demonstrate how tree species extinction will lead to the loss of many other plants and animals...

Societal Impact Statement Trees are essential to life on earth—playing important economic, ecological and cultural roles. However, the world is facing a biodiversity crisis, and to be able to effectively conserve tree species with limited funds, we need to know which tree species are threatened. The Global Tree Assessment has addressed this gap in...

Societal Impact Statement Comprehensive Red List assessments act as valuable resources for informing protected area designations, national protected species legislation and action strategies, and international biodiversity agreements, yet they are lacking for many plant families. Magnoliaceae is one of the most comprehensively assessed families, as...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 21/04/2022.

As part of an integrated initiative to compile the world’s tree species (GlobalTreeSearch), assess their conservation status (Global Tree Assessment, GTA) and devise practical conservation action for threatened taxa (Global Trees Campaign, GTC), this review provides a synthesis of the collaborative efforts carried out in China under this framework...

With two in five plant species facing extinction, plant diversity loss demands action that integrates ex situ with in situ conservation approaches. While conservation in seed banks has been widely adopted, this technology cannot be applied to exceptional species, which require alternative approaches. We propose a new conceptual framework, resulting...

The use of ecological replacements (analogue species to replace extinct taxa) to restore ecosystem functioning is a promising conservation tool. However, this approach is controversial, in part due to a paucity of data on interactions between analogue species and established taxa in the ecosystem. We conducted ecological surveys, comprehensively DN...

To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, the international community requires clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially and how multiple targets can be pursued concurrently. To support goal setting and the implementation of international strategies and action plans, spatial guidance is needed...

Robust evaluation of the impact of biodiversity conservation actions is important not only for ensuring that conservation strategies are effective and maximise return on investment, but also to identify and celebrate successful conservation strategies. This evaluation can be retrospective (comparing the current situation to a counterfactual scenari...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will probably include a goal to stabilize and restore the status of species. Its delivery would be facilitated by making the actions required to halt and reverse species loss spatially explicit. Here, we develop a species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 04/03/2021.

Never before has the biosphere, the thin layer of life we call home, been under such intensive and urgent threat. Deforestation rates have soared as we have cleared land to feed ever-more people, global emissions are disrupting the climate system, new pathogens threaten our crops and our health, illegal trade has eradicated entire plant populations...

Societal Impact Statement Plants and fungi have provided, or inspired, key pharmaceuticals for global health challenges, including cancer, heart disease, dementia, and malaria, and are valued as traditional medicines worldwide. Global demand for medicinal plants and fungi has threatened certain species, contributing to biodiversity loss and depleti...

Plant and fungal biodiversity support all life on earth and merit careful stewardship in an increasingly uncertain environment. However, gaps and biases in documented extinction risks to plant and fungal species impede effective management. Formal extinction risk assessments help avoid extinctions, through engagement, financial or legal mechanisms,...

Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi project provides assessments of our current knowledge of the diversity of plants and fungi on Earth, the global threats that they face, and the policies to safeguard them. Produced in conjunction with an international scientific symposium, Kew’s State of the World’s Plants and Fungi sets an important inte...

Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) contains the aim to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure the degree to which this was achieved, we used expert elicitation to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993–2020 (the lifetime of th...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 29/06/2020.

paragraph To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, countries and the international community require clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially, and multiple targets be pursued concurrently ¹ . To support governments and political conventions, spatial guidance is needed to identify which areas...

The Red List of Dry Forest Trees of Madagascar reveals that more than half of the dry forest tree species in Madagascar are threatened with extinction. The dry forest, concentrated in the west and the south of the island, is one of Madagascar’s unique ecosystems and covers over 20% of the country. Exploitation and human pressure on the dry forest h...

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) ambitiously calls for an assessment of extinction risk for all recognised plant taxa by 2020. It is now clear that this target will not be met in the short-term; only 21-26% of known plant species have been assessed - a monumental shortfall in anticipated knowledge. Yet the need for risk assessments...

The 822 eucalypt species (Angophora, Corymbia, Eucalyptus) within Australia were assessed using IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. Overall, 193 (23%) eucalypts qualified as threatened and 36 were considered Data Deficient. One hundred and thirty-four threatened species qualified under criterion A2, representing a past and irreversible populatio...

Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) aims to 'prevent extinctions of known threatened species'. To measure its success, we used a Delphi expert elicitation method to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993 - 2020 (the lifetime of the CBD) and 2010 - 20...

Research on species recovery, reintroduction, and conservation disproportionally focusses on birds and mammals. Typically, less attention is given to hyper-diverse but ecologically important groups such as plants and invertebrates. In this study, we focussed on a continent with one of the world’s highest proportions of endemic plant species (Austra...

The GlobalTreeSearch database provides the names of all tree species known to science and the countries where these trees grow. TreeeX is a visual exploration system that supports multifaceted analyses of the GlobalTreeSearch data. Investigating research questions on biodiversity and conservation on a global or national scale are visually supported...

The European Red List is a review of the status of European species according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level – in order that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status. This publication summarises results for all Europe’s native...

The European Red List is a review of the status of European species according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level – in order that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status. This publication summarises results for all Europe’s native...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 20/06/2019.

The Red List of Nothofagus has revealed that 30% of all Nothofagus species are threatened with extinction in the wild. The Nothofagaceae family is made up of 37 species, all in the genus Nothofagus. The report assessed all 37 species in this genus using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. Eleven species were identified as at risk of extincti...

Herbarium specimens provide verifiable and citable evidence of the occurrence of particular plants at particular points in space and time, and are vital resources for assessing extinction risk in the tropics, where plant diversity and threats to plants are greatest. We reviewed approaches to assessing extinction risk in response to the Convention o...

Herbarium specimens provide verifiable and citable evidence of the occurrence of particular plants at particular points in space and time, and are vital resources for assessing extinction risk in the tropics, where plant diversity and threats to plants are greatest. We reviewed approaches to assessing extinction risk in response to the Convention o...

Herbarium specimens provide verifiable and citable evidence of the occurrence of particular plants at particular points in space and time, and are vital resources for assessing extinction risk in the tropics, where plant diversity and threats to plants are greatest. We reviewed approaches to assessing extinction risk in response to the Convention o...

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 05/04/2018.

Evidence-based assessments of extinction risk are established tools used to inform the conservation of plant species, and form the basis of key targets within the framework of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). An overall picture of plants threat assessments is challenging due to the use of a variety of methodologies and range in sc...

Evidence-based assessments of extinction risk are established tools used to inform the conservation of plant species, and form the basis of key targets within the framework of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC). An overall picture of plants threat assessments is challenging due to the use of a variety of methodologies and range in sc...

Fraxinus is an iconic genus of trees within the Oleaceae family, known for its horticultural significance and the key ecosystem functions it provides in temperate woodland. However, the genus is becoming increasingly associated with the bleak news of the devastating impact that pests and diseases are having on populations of many Fraxinus species....

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) set an ambitious target to achieve a conservation assessment for all known plant species by 2020. We consolidated digitally available plant conservation assessments and reconciled their scientific names and assessment status to predefined standards to provide a quantitative measure of progress towar...

Efforts to assess the conservation status of all tree species worldwide are gaining pace with the 2020 deadline for the Global Tree Assessment not far away. This Red List of Theaceae demonstrates exactly why the task of cataloguing the status of the world’s tree species is so important. Theaceae is a fascinating family of woody plants with many hor...

Only a green world, rich in plants, can sustain us and the millions of other species with which we share this planet. But, in an era of global change, nature is on the retreat. Like the communities they form, many plant species are becoming rarer, threatened even to the point of extinction. The worldwide community of almost three thousand botanic g...

First comprehensive database of tree species - Volume 51 Issue 3 - Paul Smith, Emily Beech, Malin Rivers, Sara Oldfield

The complete list of species within the GlobalTreeSearch database on 05/04/2017.

This paper presents, for the first time, an overview of all known tree species by scientific name and country level distribution, and describes an online database—GlobalTreeSearch—that provides access to this information. Based on our comprehensive analysis of published data sources and expert input, the number of tree species currently known to sc...

A report on the global timber trade, including a working list of timber tree taxa in commercial trade. Produced as part of PhD research with Bournemouth University and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI). The full report and appendices are also available online through BGCI (https://www.bgci.org/news-and-events/news/1175/) and the Glo...

Given the multiple facets of ex situ conservation, this section aims to provide guidance on selected key research and conservation undertaken by botanic gardens. This includes methods and standards for different types of ex situ conservation collections – living and non-living – and their relevance to and integration with in situ conservation endea...

Although trees have high economic, cultural and ecological value, increasing numbers of species are potentially at risk of extinction because of forest loss and degradation as a result of human activities, including overharvesting, fire and grazing. Emerging threats include climate change and its interaction with the spread of pests and diseases. T...