Regional Red List Assessment of Tree Species in Upper Montane Forests of the Tropical Andes
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Regional Red List assessment of tree species in upper montane forests of the Tropical Andes N ATALIA T EJEDOR G ARAVITO,ADRIAN C. NEWTON and S ARA O LDFIELD Abstract The Tropical Andes are characterized by a high conservation policies and legislation, to support the identi- level of endemism and plant species richness but are fication of priority areas for conservation, and to prioritize under pressure from human activities. We present the first species-based conservation actions (Hoffmann et al., ; regional conservation assessment of upper montane tree Mace et al., ). Red List assessments also contribute to species in this region. We identified , tree species as oc- Target of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, an curring in this region, of which were excluded because of initiative of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which a lack of data on their distribution. We identified a subset of refers to ‘an assessment of the conservation status of all taxa that were restricted to higher elevations (. , m) known plant species, as far as possible, to guide conservation but occurred in more than one country, thus excluding local action’, to be achieved by . endemics evaluated in previous national assessments. By the IUCN Red List database included a total of Distribution maps were created for each of these selected , tree species (Newton & Oldfield, ), most of which species, and extinction risk was assessed according to the had been assessed . years previously in The World List of IUCN Red List categories and criteria (version .), drawing Threatened Trees (Oldfield et al., ) or were included in on expert knowledge elicited from a regional network of assessments of the endemic tree species of Ecuador specialists. We assessed one species, Polylepis microphylla, (Valencia et al., ; León-Yánez et al., ) and of Peru as Critically Endangered, species as Endangered and (León et al., ). Since . , tree taxa have been as Vulnerable. Overall, % of the species evaluated were ca- evaluated but fewer than half of these have been added to tegorized as threatened, or % if national endemics are in- the Red List database (Newton & Oldfield, ), and cluded. It is recommended that extinction risk assessments many tree species have yet to be assessed. Progress has for tree species be used to inform the development of con- been limited by a number of factors, including the lack of servation strategies in the region, to avoid further loss of this appropriate data on the status and distribution of many spe- important element of biodiversity. cies. Red List assessments of plant species often depend on Keywords Biodiversity, conservation, extinction risk, flora, the use of herbarium records (Brummitt et al., ; Rivers forest, threat et al., ) and supporting data from geographical infor- mation systems (Nic Lughadha et al., ; Cicuzza et al., To view supplementary material for this article, please visit ) to identify the potential distribution of species and http://dx.doi.org/s relevant threats, which are mainly of anthropogenic origin. Such data, however, are often limited in availability. Assessments have also been hindered by taxonomic con- fusion surrounding many taxa, and by a lack of resources Introduction to support the assessment process (Nic Lughadha et al., he IUCN Red List categories and criteria provide an ; Hoffmann et al., ; Newton & Oldfield, ). authoritative approach for assessing species’ risk of ex- Red List assessments provide fundamental information T ’ tinction (Rodrigues et al., ; Mace et al., ). The as- on species status and population trends, of relevance to sessment criteria are based on population sizes and rates of both science and policy (Rodrigues et al., ; Mace decline, and the extent and decline of geographical ranges et al., ; Stuart et al., ). Although some national as- (IUCN, ). The IUCN Red List has been used to inform sessments of vascular plants have been undertaken in the Andean region (e.g. Valencia et al., ), there has been no previous systematic assessment of the area’s montane NATALIA TEJEDOR GARAVITO and ADRIAN C. NEWTON (Corresponding author) tree species. This unique region has c. ecosystem types Faculty of Science and Technology, Bournemouth University, Fern Barrow, Talbot Campus, Poole BH125BB, UK. E-mail [email protected] (Josse et al., a,b), with high habitat diversity resulting from altitudinal and latitudinal gradients (Josse et al., SARA OLDFIELD Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), Richmond, Surrey, UK ). Andean montane forests are a major conservation Received November . Revision requested December . priority globally because of their biological richness and Accepted January . First published online May . high level of endemism (Olson & Dinerstein, ; Bush Oryx, 2015, 49(3), 397–409 © 2015 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605315000198 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.219, on 30 Sep 2021 at 18:09:12, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605315000198 398 N. Tejedor Garavito et al. et al., ). These forests also provide valuable ecosystem associated with other types of vegetation were included in services, including those related to water quality and flow, the assessment, however, because some species occur in the regulation of regional climate, and carbon capture and more than one vegetation type. Trees are defined here as up- storage (Cuesta et al., ), and are considered to be right woody plants with a dominant above-ground stem at amongst the least-known tropical ecosystems (Gentry, least m in height (Körner, ), including palms and ; Ataroff & Rada, ; Bubb et al., ; Pitman woody ferns. Bamboo species such as Chusquea spp. were et al., ). Andean montane forests are threatened by on- excluded because they are considered tall grasses. going forest loss, fragmentation and degradation (Tejedor Garavito et al., ), and the potential effects of climate change (Cuesta et al., ; Feeley & Silman, ; Herzog Methods et al., ). Here we describe an assessment of the extinction risk of To support the assessment a series of workshops were held tree species in upper montane forests in the Tropical Andes, in Ecuador and Peru, involving at least two botanical specia- which was undertaken using the IUCN Red List categories lists representing each country in the region (Argentina, and criteria (IUCN, ). Specifically, the assessment fo- Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela). These cused on those taxa that are restricted to the Tropical specialists were affiliated with a range of institutions, includ- Andean region but are distributed in more than one coun- ing national herbaria, botanical gardens and conservation try. The assessment thus focused on regional endemics but organizations, and provided expert knowledge throughout did not consider national endemics, to complement pre- the assessment process. vious Red List assessments of vascular plants undertaken During the first project workshop a consolidated list of at the national scale (e.g. Bolivia, Meneses & Beck, ; the candidate tree species known to occur in the montane Colombia, Calderón et al., ; Ecuador, León-Yánez Tropical Andes was produced. This was based on the expert et al., ; Peru, León et al., ; and Venezuela, knowledge provided by the network of specialists that par- Llamozas et al., ). ticipated in the assessment, supported by data from a range of sources, including the Tropicos database (Missouri Botanical Garden, ), regional herbaria (Colombian Scope and study area National Herbarium, COL; Venezuelan National Herbarium, VEN; Bolivian National Herbarium, LPB; The scope of this assessment was the Tropical Andes, in Herbarium of the Universidad Pontificia Católica in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Ecuador, QCA; and San Marcos Herbarium of the Venezuela, which represent most of the montane forests Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru, USM), in the Andean region. The definition of upper montane for- regional floras, and personal databases. The nomenclature est for the purposes of this study includes cloud forest of taxa on the list was checked and revised using The (Northern Andean, Yungas and BolivianTucuman forests) Plant List () to identify synonyms and those species un- and seasonal (wet) forest at . , m altitude, with tem- resolved taxonomically. The APG III system of the peratures of –°C and mean annual precipitation of Angiosperm Phylogeny Group () was followed for con- . , mm, as described by Josse et al. (a,b). Our in- sistency in the names of species and families. tention was to ensure that only tree species associated with Geographical distribution data for each of the tree species upper montane forest were included in the assessment and, were compiled, based primarily on vouchered records from through a process of expert consultation, it was adjudged herbaria. Sources of information included personal records that a lower altitudinal limit of , m would achieve of specialists involved in the assessment, the Tropicos data- this. As noted by Bruijnzeel () the transition from base (Missouri Botanical Garden, ), regional herbaria, lower to upper montane forest coincides with the altitude and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, where cloud condensation becomes most persistent; this ty- ; Supplementary Table S). A spatial database incorpor- pically occurs at elevations of ,–, m on mountains ating these data was created