2010 North American Collections Assessment

Conserving North America's Threatened Plants:
Progress report on Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation

The 2010 North American Collections Assessment was a joint project of BGCI U.S., the United States Botanic Garden, and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, with additional funding provided by the Wallace Genetic Foundation. Through the Assessment, we generated a consolidated list of threatened plants in North America and compared it with North American collections information maintained in BGCI’s PlantSearch database. These results are a critical step in helping the botanical community prioritize the development of ex situ conservation collections for threatened taxa not yet in genetically diverse and representative collections, and directly supports Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation.

Many thanks to the hundreds of data contributors and collaborators that helped make this project a success!

Download the report and supplemental information

Full Report (4MB)

Executive Summary

Appendix 1: Participating institutions

Appendix 2: Case studies (FULL TEXT available here only)

Appendix 3: Status of North America's most threatened plants

Recommended citation:

Kramer, A., A. Hird, K. Shaw, M. Dosmann, and R. Mims. 2011. Conserving North America’s Threatened Plants: Progress towards Target 8 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Botanic Gardens Conservation International U.S.

Recent Article What is the Conservation Value of Botanic Garden Plant Collections? A. Kramer and A. Hird 2011

Stay Involved - Annual Updates

You can contribute to global plant conservation and research initiatives by updating your institution's GardenSearch profile, and uploading a spreadsheet of taxa held in your living plant and seed bank collections to PlantSearch. BGCI's online databases connect botanical expertise, collections, and facilities to a global botanical network, and allows gardens to assess the conservation value of collections literally overnight and free of charge. To participate, refer to the Plant Upload Instructions (en Espanol: PlantSearch instrucciones).