Priority ranking for the conservation of all European bryophyte species

The assessment of the extinction risk of all bryophytes in the European Red List (Hodgetts et al., 2019) now enables significant progress with conservation work. To identify those redlisted species that warrant highest conservation priority in Europe to preserve the species globally, we developed an efficient and reproducible approach: We applied two quantitative criteria to each of the included species, one criterion based on the species’ Red List status in Europe, and one on the proportion of the global population that is situated within Europe, or global rarity. Using the resulting scores, we grouped the species into high (135 species; 24 %), medium (126 species; 23 %) and low (292 species; 53 %) priority for conservation. Thanks to Nick Hodgetts’ occurrence data, the species and related priority attributes are freely accessible for each European country or territory, and thus readily applicable for national conservation decisions. The project was initiated by Ariel Bergamini, WSL, (Switzerland) and led by Irene Bisang, Swedish Museum of Natural History and Ariel. It would not have been possible without the significant contributions by ECCB members Christian Schröck, Norbert Schnyder, Neil Lockhart and Nick Hodgetts.