Global strategy for plant conservation: inadequate in situ conservation of threatened flora in Spain

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) seeks to assess the conservation status of the world vascular plants by 2020, and to guarantee that at least 75% threatened taxa are conserved in situ. A comprehensive evaluation of IUCN categories for 7269 Spanish vascular plants (GSPC Target 2), using distribution data and environmental niche models, is presented. A gap analysis to assess the percentage of threatened plants effectively conserved in situ (considering national parks, plant micro-reserves and recovery or conservation plans) was also conducted (Target 7). The result is that only 44.4% threatened species are subject to an adequate in situ protection. An appropriate management of additional natural protected areas towards the conservation of threatened plants would make Spain meet this threshold, but severe deficiencies should be corrected. The methodology presented here is proposed as a tool to assess the degree of achievement of GSPC targets. This procedure can be quickly implemented and allows an easy evaluation of the progress, as well as the pending tasks in a given period of time.