1. Urgence Conservation: The involvement of the Montréal Botanical Garden in the safeguarding of Quebec’s plant heritage
2. IUCN-SSC Plant Committee Gathers in Eastern Ontario
3. CITES CoP14 Plants Results
4. Plants for life: medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens
5. Adopt-a-Plant
6. Review of the First Conference on Phyto-Engineering in Québec

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2. IUCN-SSC Plant Committee Gathers in Eastern Ontario, Danna Leaman, Co-deputy chair, IUCN-SSC Plant Conservation Sub-Committee

In mid September, members and guests of the Plant Conservation Sub-Committee of the Species Survival Commission, the World Conservation Union, gathered for a two-day strategy session in Lanark County, Eastern Ontario. Foremost on the agenda was a review of the activities of the IUCN network of plant specialist groups during the current IUCN quadrennium (2005-2008), and articulating the network’s priorities through 2012.

Aligning and supporting the IUCN-SSC plant network’s contributions to Target 2 of the Global Plant Conservation Strategy, “A preliminary assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species, at national, regional and international levels” is, and will continue to be, a central priority, reflecting the facilitating role undertaken by the IUCN Species Programme, a member of the Global Partnership for Plant Conservation, for this target. While much progress has been made in recent years by the broader IUCN-SSC expert network on global assessments of birds, mammals, and amphibians, a global conservation assessment of all plant species present an enormous challenge to plant experts world-wide: among the 240,000 – 420,000 species of higher plants, and 14,000 – 15,000 species of bryophytes thought to exist, fewer than 12,000 plant species have been assessed according to the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. Of these existing assessments, approximately 1,000 are up-to-date with the categories and criteria revised in 2001 and the more thorough documentation required. Several approaches to meet this challenge are underway. These include:

• Full Red List assessment of a rigorously defined set of priority taxa (further refinement of these priorities ongoing)
• Improved access to results of national and regional Red List and other conservation status assessments and the criteria applied (under discussion)
• RapidList – a “quick and dirty” method for preliminary IUCN Red List assessment (prototype version being tested)
• Sampled Red List Index (SRLI) – full IUCN Red List assessment of 1,500 species from each of the following taxonomic groups: bryophytes, pteridophytes, gymnosperms, monocots, and dicots, repeated at regular intervals.
  

Additional priorities discussed during the September strategy meeting include activities of the IUCN-SSC plant network that address, inter alia, the impacts of invasive species, climate change, expansion of biofuels, and non-sustainable use of economically important species on plant conservation.