In November of 2011, the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated its Red List of Threatened Species,
documenting an increasing threat faced by several plants, including some
important medicinal species.1 IUCN describes its Red List as “the world’s
most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of
plant and animal species.”2 Though IUCN often partners with the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES),
the Red List is separate from the CITES appendices, which document the
conservation status and risk assessments of animals and plants while also
serving as an international agreement implementing trade restrictions followed
by CITES members.3
For the Red List, IUCN and partner organizations, such as
the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew (in the United Kingdom), assess thousands of
plant and animal species, considering which of 8 extinction risk levels a
species should be classified as if no conservation action were to take
place.2 The 8 risk levels are classed as follows: data deficient, least concern,
near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the
wild, and extinct. Factors considered in the classification process include
population trend, population size and structure, and geographic range.
According to Danna Leaman, PhD—the chair of IUCN’s
Medicinal Plants Specialist Group (MPSG)—many medicinal species are included on
the Red List, but it has been difficult to determine exactly which ones and how
many (e-mail, December 12, 2011). In order to address this issue and document
the conservation status of medicinals, the MPSG began building a Global
Checklist of Medicinal Plants based on international, regional, and national
pharmacopeias and medicinal floras, as well as the NAPRAlert database at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, developed by the late Professor Norman
Farnsworth. In May of 2010, the group teamed with TRAFFIC International to
compare the list that then consisted of 16,600 species (and now includes ca.
27,000) with the online and off-line versions of the IUCN Red List.
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