Biodiversité

Ce mois-ci, redécouvrez l'Anodonte crépue, bivalve de Guyane qui n'avait pas été revu depuis 1792, retrouvez les résultats de la Liste rouge de la faune de Martinique, écoutez les enregistrements sonores de la nature et consultez le règlement européen CITES mis à jour.

When an expert volunteer is walking through a sunny meadow recording butterflies or searching by torchlight for newts, it can seem a long way from the negotiating halls of Convention on Biological Diversity meetings or from civil servants drafting new legislation.

But trends in species’ abundance, distribution or extinction risk, derived from monitoring and recording schemes, have wide influence in developing and monitoring environmental strategies, agreements and legislation.

Individual species status assessments underpin the lists of priority species within each of the four UK countries. For example, the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 gives Welsh ministers the responsibility ‘maintain and enhance’ species on the Section 7 list. However, many uses of species’ status information come from creating composite measures giving an overview of the status of a taxonomic group, habitat type or of species in general.