ARTICLE : Nationally and regionally threatened plants in Wellington Conservancy

 December 2001 – A new list of nationally and regionally threatened plants in Wellington Conservancy (excluding Chatham Islands)

The Department of Conservation now invites suggestions from BotSoccers on the species that should be included in a new regional threatened plant list for Wellington Conservancy (excluding Chatham Islands).

This is a continuation of a project that Wellington BotSoc began in the 1980s, when the region’s first threatened plant list was prepared and published as a supplement to the newsletter (see Ogle 1981).

The list will include species at greatest risk of regional extinction, or are in serious or gradual decline.   Suggestions must be received by 1 March 2002 (see below for address).   A meeting of key members of the Wellington Plant Conservation Network will be held later in 2002 at which time a final regional threatened plant list will be prepared for publication in the BotSoc Bulletin.

In 1996, DOC published a threatened plant list for Wellington Conservancy identifying 187 plant species either nationally or regionally threatened.   Since then the Department has developed a new system for classifying threatened species, based on work by David Norton and Peter de Lange.   That has resulted in a new list of nationally threatened species for New Zealand.   A list of the nationally threatened plants in Wellington will be published in the next BotSoc Newsletter.

While nationally threatened species remain priorities for conservation management and species recovery efforts, there is also a need to identify species that are threatened within a particular region.   It is those species that could become nationally threatened unless we intervene now.

To identify those regionally threatened species, DOC seeks help from BotSoccers to determine the species most at risk.   The regional threat categories are listed below:
• Regionally Extinct
• Regionally Critical
• Regionally Endangered
• Regionally Vulnerable
• Serious decline in the region
• Gradual decline in the region
• Data deficient.

If the species is taxonomically indeterminate, it can still be classified according to the above categories.   Please contact DOC if you would like more information about how the threat categories are defined.

John Sawyer Biodiversity – Technical Support Officer Wellington Conservancy Department of Conservation PO Box 5086, Wellington Tel: (04) 470 8427 Fax: (04) 499 0077 E-mail: jsawyer@doc.govt.nz