Journal for Nature Conservation 19 (2011) 6971

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal for Nature Conservation

journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/jnc

Assessing extinction risk across borders: Integration of a biogeographical approach into regional IUCN assessment?
Rodolfo Gentili a , G. Rossi b, , T. Abeli b , G. Bedini c , Bruno Foggi d
a

Dipartimento di Scienze dellAmbiente e del Territorio, Universit degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 1, I-20126 Milano, Italy Dipartimento di Ecologia del Territorio, Universit degli Studi di Pavia, Via S. Epifanio 14, I-27100 Pavia, Italy Dipartimento di Biologia, Universit di Pisa, Via Luca Ghini 5, I-56126 Pisa, Italy d Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale, Universit di Firenze, Via La Pira 4, I-50121 Firenze, Italy
b c

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
In ecological studies it is widely accepted that the biogeographical subdivision of continents and regions simplies and integrates the complexity of natural ecosystems and species range by separating variation or distinctions into biogeographical subdivisions that could be used as appropriate units for the conservation of biodiversity. In this paper we support the opinion that the biogeographical approach could be a unifying method for the analysis of the extinction risk of threatened species according to the IUCN Categories and Criteria at the regional level. We examined recent papers regarding the conservation assessment of species and discussed the advantages of incorporating convergence of conservation action plans between bordering countries, and nancial issues, into the IUCN protocol. 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 26 February 2010 Received in revised form 27 April 2010 Accepted 2 June 2010 Keywords: Biogeography and conservation IUCN assessments Funds allocation Political borders Red Lists

1. Introduction The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is recognised as one of the most authoritative sources of information on the global conservation status of species (Miller et al. 2007). The IUCN has set an objective, repeatable, and scientic standard for species listings, based on the assessment of extinction risk at a global level (IUCN 2001; Mace et al. 2008). This standard is often applied to regional assessments and local administrative levels (IUCN 2003). However, the most appropriate biogeographical or geopolitical scale for local conservation actions is arguable (Hartley & Kunin 2003; Martn 2009). In this opinion article, we discuss a biogeographical approach for assessing species extinction risk by applying the IUCN Categories and Criteria to the regional level (IUCN 2001, 2003). For regional assessments, as in national Red Lists, the IUCN Categories and Criteria have been generally applied with reference to political units (Grdenfors 2001; Grdenfors et al. 2001; IUCN 2003). This is because conservation actions are mainly implemented at the national level; thus, these lists are inuential for determining conservation priorities (Miller et al. 2007). However, the ranges of species seldom correspond to political boundaries, making the administrative approach unsuitable for the evaluation

Corresponding author. E-mail address: graziano.rossi@unipv.it (G. Rossi). 1617-1381/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jnc.2010.06.001

of the species extinction risk (Leppig & White 2006; Rodrigues & Gaston 2002). To bypass the inadequacy of political boundaries in setting conservation policies, many authors have recommended a biogeographical approach to protecting biodiversity (Abbit et al. 2000; Hoffmann et al. 2008; Olson & Dinerstein 1998; Olson et al. 2001; Pawar et al. 2007; Spector 2002; Whittaker et al. 2005). According to Udvardy (1975), the aims of conservation biology within a biogeographical context are the preservation of members of biotas (such as individuals, populations, or species) and functional ecological systems (Blondel 1999). In practice, the principal aims of conservation biologists should be to know the risk of extinction for given species and to determine where resources for protected species and ecosystems can best be allocated (Plassmann 2004; Robbirt et al. 2006; WWF Italia 2006). In this context, we propose that a biogeographical approach should be considered for editing regional (sub-global) Red Lists, following the IUCN Categories and Criteria. What are the advantages of a biogeographical approach to regional Red-Listing? The main goal of the biogeographical approach is to get conservation and economic advantage, mainly in the case of species whose extent of occurrence is located at the border between two or more political units. Different assessments of species between bordering regions can result in different levels of protection to the same species. A biogeographic area is an area where similar biotic and abiotic forces drove the evolution of the population there present. Evaluation of species extinction risks at the biogeographical level would provide an assessment of all

70

R. Gentili et al. / Journal for Nature Conservation 19 (2011) 6971

populations within a homogeneous area, which presumably share the same threats and would require similar management needs (e.g., the Alpine or Mediterranean regions). This is particularly true for animals that migrate or move between bordering nations that, as pointed out by Berger (2004), pose a serious conservation concern (e.g., brown bears in the Alpine regions of Italy, Slovenia, and Austria) (Wiegand et al. 2004). Having biogeographical knowledge could put local conservation situations into a broader perspective (Keller & Bollmann 2004), avoiding unnecessary conservation efforts and waste of money (Bladt et al. 2009). The integration of bioregions in the IUCN Categories and Criteria does not rule out assessments at the national level (or any other administrative level); in fact, after making an assessment at the biogeographical level, the same threat category/ies could be assigned to the national level by superimposing geopolitical boundaries onto the biogeographical subdivision. For example, across the Carpathian region (Rivas-Martnez et al. 2004) many species have been assigned to high threat categories within each country, but at the biogeographical level they were assigned to lower categories of threat (Witkowski et al. 2003). In the Alpine region, plant species have been assigned to different risk categories in different countries (e.g., Orchis palustris Jacq.) (Moser et al. 2002; Rossi et al. 2008). At the sub-national level in Italy and Spain, many plant species occurring at the borders of two administrative regions have been assigned to different threat categories (Conti et al. 1997; SEBCP 2009). Most of these species probably require the same protection in different regions; thus, an assessment of extinction risk at the biogeographical level could facilitate the convergence of action plans in different administrative areas. Cooperation between bordering countries and states or provinces within countries should be possible, at least for unions or federations of states (the EU, USA, Australia, Russia, etc.) (Bladt et al. 2009). However, in some cases, the ecological, evolutionary, and conservation processes may have marked variations among different areas of a same biogeographical region. In these cases, before superimposing a biogeographical risk category, local conditions should be considered and understood, to avoid a loss of conservation value. This kind of trade-off would favour an homogenisation of the estimated extinction risk when differences between geographic areas are inconsistent; on the contrary, it would highlight cases of relevant conservation units. Red Lists at the global or sub-global level (IUCN 2001, 2003) include data not only on threats to species, but also on species distributions (extent of occurrence) and habitats at different temporal and spatial scales (Hoffmann et al. 2008). Hence, they are probably the main source of information for conservation planners (Lamoreux et al. 2003). However, what does the study of species distribution, habitat preference, and habitat fragmentation represent, if not a biogeographical study? In some contexts, the IUCN seems interested in applying a biogeographical-like approach (IUCN Species Survival Commission 2008). The Top 50 Mediterranean Island Plants at risk of extinction (de Montmollin & Strahm 2005) were assessed independently of political boundaries. In our opinion this could be considered a good example of a biogeographical approach to regional IUCN assessment. Other authors have mentioned biogeographical regions in their application of the IUCN protocol (Cabezudo et al. 2005; Moser et al. 2002). A biogeographical approach was also used in a recent Red-Listing initiative of the Italian Botanical Society and of an European network of 25 seed banks working on wild ora (Rossi & Gentili 2008; Rossi et al. 2008; ENSCONET 2009). Similar methods were applied to evaluate peripheral isolated plant populations (Abeli et al. 2009) and to prioritise the conservation of oristic diversity in the Indian Himalayan region (Rana & Samant 2010). One criticism of the biogeographical approach is that a shared map of biogeographical regions that could satisfy the whole scientic community does not exist. Dening areas of interest to set

conservation priorities is a recurring issue in the scientic literature (e.g., Myers et al. 2000; Noss 1990; Plantlife International 2004; Turpie et al. 2000). Nevertheless, some subdivisions seem to respond better than others to the demand of botanists and zoologists (see e.g., Olson et al. 2001) and they can represent a starting base for an international debate. The European Environment Agency (EEA) has produced a biogeographical subdivision of Europe. Its aim is to redirect all nancial resources, conservation actions, and restoration activities to the continental level (Cond et al. 20022008). This subdivision is the basis for the application of the European Directive 92/43 Habitat and could represent a starting point for the biogeographical assessment of European species. We consider the biogeographical approach useful for conservation (see also Richardson & Whittaker 2010), and we propose its integration into the IUCN Red List Assessment at the regional level. In the 1970s, the IUCN proposed a biogeographical subdivision of the world (Udvardy 1975). We expect that such a project will be resumed and discussed at an international level to ensure the standardisation of methods. According to Riddle (2009) What is modern biogeography without philogeography; we can add: what is modern conservation biology without biogeography? Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to L. Boitani (Rome), J.C. Moreno (Madrid) and E. Laguna (Valencia) for providing helpful comments on the manuscript. The authors are also grateful to T. Ulian (Royal Botanical Garden, Kew) for critical language revisions. Finally, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for the useful nal suggestions. References
Abbit, R. J. F., Scott, J. M., & Wilcove, D. S. (2000). The geography of vulnerability: Incorporating species geography and human development into conservation planning. Biological Conservation, 96, 169175. Abeli, T., Gentili, R., Rossi, G., Bedini, G., & Foggi, B. (2009). Can the IUCN criteria be effectively applied to peripheral isolated plant populations? Biodiversity and Conservation, 18, 38773890. Berger, J. (2004). The last mile: how to sustain long-distance migration in mammals. Conservation Biology, 18, 320331. Bladt, J., Strange, N., Abildtrup, J., Svenning, J.-C., & Skov, F. (2009). Conservation efciency of geopolitical coordination in the EU. Journal for Nature Conservation, 17, 7286. Blondel, J. (1999). Biogographie. In Collection dcologie n. 27. Paris: Masson. Cabezudo, B., Talavera, S., Blanca, G., Salazar, C., Cueto, M., Valds, B., et al. (2005). Lista roja de la ora vascular de Andaluca. Junta de Andaluca: Consejera de medio ambiente. Cond, S., Richard, D., Liamine, N., Leclre, A. S., Pinborg, U., Larsson, T.B., et al. (20022008). Europes biodiversity biogeogrphical regions and seas. European Environmental Agency (EEA), UNEP/GRID. Available from http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/report 2002 0524 154909 (accessed September 2009). Conti, F., Manzi, A., & Pedrotti, F. (1997). Liste rosse regionali delle piante dItalia. Camerino. Dipartimento di Botanica ed Ecologia, Universit degli Studi di Camerino. de Montmollin, B., & Strahm, W. (2005). The Top 50 Mediterranean Island Plants: Wild plants at the brink of extinction, and what is needed to save them. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN/SSC Mediterranean Islands Plant Specialist Group. ENSCONET. (2009). European native seed conservation network: Area of work, kew. Available from http://www.ensconet.eu/work.htm (accessed September 2009). Grdenfors, U. (2001). Classifying threatened species at a national versus global level. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 511516. Grdenfors, U., Hilton-Taylor, C., Mace, G. M., & Rodrguez, J. P. (2001). The application of IUCN Red List Criteria at regional level. Conservation Biology, 15, 12061212. Hartley, S., & Kunin, W. E. (2003). Scale dependency of rarity, extinction risk, and conservation priority. Conservation Biology, 16, 15591570. Hoffmann, M., Brooks, T. M., da Fonseca, G. A. B., Gascon, C., Hawkins, A. F. A., James, R. E., et al. (2008). Conservation planning and the IUCN Red List. Endangered Species Research, doi:10.3354/esr00087

R. Gentili et al. / Journal for Nature Conservation 19 (2011) 6971 IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). (2001). IUCN Red List categories. Version 3.1. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: Prepared by the IUCN Species Survival Commission Re-introduction Specialist Group, World Conservation Union. IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). (2003). Guidelines for application of IUCN Red List Criteria at regional levels. Version 3.0. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN Species Survival Commission. IUCN (Species Survival Commission). (2008). Strategic planning for species conservation: A handbook. Version 1.0. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: The Species Planning Task Force, Species Survival Commission IUCN. Keller, V., & Bollmann, K. (2004). From Red Lists to species of conservation concern. Conservation Biology, 18, 16361644. Lamoreux, J., Akcakaya, H. R., Bennun, L., Collar, N. J., Boitani, L., Brackett, D., et al. (2003). Value of the IUCN Red List. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18, 214215. Leppig, G., & White, J. W. (2006). Conservation of peripheral plant populations in California. Madroo, 53, 264274. n Mace, G. M., Collar, N. J., Gaston, K. J., Hilton-Taylor, C., Akcakaya, H. R., LeaderWilliams, N., et al. (2008). Quantication of extinction risk: IUCNs system for classifying threatened species. Conservation Biology, 22, 14241442. Martn, J. L. (2009). Are the IUCN standard home-range thresholds for species a good indicator to prioritise conservation urgency in small islands? A case study in the Canary Islands (Spain). Journal for Nature Conservation, 17, 8798. Miller, R. M., Rodrguez, J. P., Aniskowicz-Fowler, T., Bambaradeniya, C., Boles, R., Eaton, M. A., et al. (2007). National threatened species listing based on IUCN criteria and regional guidelines: Current status and future perspectives. Conservation Biology, 21, 684696. Moser, D., Gygax, A., Baumler, B., Wyler, N., & Palese, R. (2002). Lista Rossa delle felci e piante a ori minacciate della Svizzera. Collana UFAFP Ambiente-Esecuzione. Berna: Ufcio federale dellambiente, delle foreste e del paesaggio; Chambsy: Centro della Rete Svizzera di Floristica and Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genve. Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., Fonseca, G., & Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for Conservation priorities. Nature, 403, 853858. Noss, R. F. (1990). Indicators for monitoring biodiversity: A hierarchical approach. Conservation Biology, 4, 355364. Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E. D., Brugges, N. D., Powel, G. V. N., Underwood, E. C., et al. (2001). Terrestrial ecoregions of the World: a new map of life on Earth. Bioscience, 51, 933938. Olson, D. M., & Dinerstein, E. (1998). The Global 200: A representation approach to conserving the Earths distinctive ecoregions. Conservation Biology, 12, 502515. Pawar, S. S., Birand, A. C., Ahmed, M. F., Sengupta, S., & Raman, T. R. S. (2007). Conservation biogeography in North-East India: Hierarchical analysis of cross-taxon distributional congruence. Diversity and Distributions, 13, 5365. Plantlife International. (2004). Identifying and protecting the worlds most Important Plant Areas: A guide to implementing target 5 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Salisbury, UK: Plantlife International.

71

Plassmann, G. (2004). Rete ecologica transfrontaliera. Studio mandato Convenzione delle alpi: aree protette transfrontaliere e rete ecologica delle Alpi. Innsbruck: Segretariato permanente della Convenzione delle Alpi. Rana, M. S., & Samant, S. S. (2010). Threat categorisation and conservation prioritisation of oristic diversity in the Indian Himalayan region: A state of art approach from Manali Wildlife Sanctuary. Journal for Nature Conservation, doi:10.1016/j.jnc.2009.08.004 Richardson, D. M., & Whittaker, R. J. (2010). Conservation biogeography foundations, concepts and challenges. Diversity and Distribution, 16, 313320. Riddle, B. R. (2009). What is modern biogeography without philogeography. Journal of Biogeography, 36, 12. Rivas-Martnez, S., Penas, A., & Daz, T. E. (2004). Biogeographic map of Europe 1:16.000.000. Leon, Spain: Cartographic Service, University of Leon. Robbirt, K. M., Roberts, D. L., & Hawkins, J. A. (2006). Comparing IUCN and probabilistic assessments of threat: Do IUCN Red List criteria conate rarity and threat? Biodiversity and Conservation, 15, 19031912. Rodrigues, A. S. L., & Gaston, K. J. (2002). Rarity and conservation planning across geopolitical units. Conservation Biology, 16, 674682. Rossi, G., & Gentili, R. (2008). A partnership project for a new Red List of the Italian Flora. Plant Biosystems, 142, 13. Rossi, G., Gentili, R., Abeli, T., Gargano, D., Foggi, B., Raimondo, F. M., et al. (2008). Flora da conservare. Iniziativa per limplementazione in Italia delle categorie e dei criteri IUCN (2001) per la redazione di nuove Liste Rosse (Special issue edited by Rossi, G., Gentili, R., Abeli, T., Gargano, D., Foggi, B., Raimondo, F. M., & Blasi, C.). Supplemento Informatore Botanico Italiano, 40. SEBCP (2009). Sociedad Espaola de Biologa de la Conservacin de Plantas, Valenn cia. Available from http://www.conservacionvegetal.org/index.html (accessed September 2009). Spector, S. (2002). Biogeographic crossroads as priority areas for biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 16, 14801487. Turpie, J. K., Beckley, L. E., & Katua, S. M. (2000). Biogeography and the selection of priority areas for conservation of South African coastal shes. Biological Conservation, 92, 5972. Udvardy, M. D. F. (1975). A classication of the biogeographical provinces of the world. IUCN Occasional Paper No. 18. Morges, Switzerland: International Union for Consevation of Nature and Natural Resources. Whittaker, R. J., Arajo, M. B., Jepson, P., Ladle, R. J., Watson, J. E. M., & Willis, K. J. (2005). Conservation biogeography: Assessment and prospect. Diversity and Distribution, 11, 323. Wiegand, T., Knauer, F., Kaczenski, P., & Naves, J. (2004). Expansion of brown bears (Ursus arctos) into the eastern Alps: A spatially explicit population model. Biodiversity and Conservation, 13, 79114. Witkowski, Z. J., Krl, W., & Solarz, W. (Eds.). (2003). Carpathian list of endangered species. Vienna-Krakow: WWF and Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences. WWF Italia. (2006). Ecoregional conservation and biodiversity vision for the Alps. Rome: Associazione Italiana per il WWF for nature.