Activities 2016

Fourteen mycologists came together in Corvallis, Oregon 25-29 April 2016 for a red list workshop focused on North American macrofungi. The conservation status of 45 species were evaluated. The workshop was made possible through support of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Foundation.

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Results from 2015

Over 50 mycologists participated in fungal red listing workshops in 2015. The results of workshops in Edinburgh, Scotland, Ekenäs, Sweden, and Melbourne, Australia significantly advanced fungal conservation. These efforts resulted in 25 additional fungal species being published on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Final evaluations of another 50 species are being readied for publication. These workshops were made possible through support of the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Foundation and the Oscar and Lilli Lamm’s foundation.

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Experiences from 2014

159 fungal species with occurrences in at least 111 countries have been nominated for assessments as of 11 December 2014. This has been a community wide effort as 80 persons from 33 countries have registered and contributed with data and information on these species.

An initial global red listing workshop was held in Sweden, Spring 2014. With the help of Craig Hilton Taylor, head of the Red List unit at IUCN, participants completed preliminary assessments of 25 fungal species. A substantial amount of data gathering and processing remained after the workshop, and unfortunately, none of the assessment were completed, processed by the IUCN fungal specialist chairs, and forwarded IUCN in sufficient time to be included in IUCNs global Red List of 2014.

This is a crowdsourcing project, which is being carried out voluntarily. Hence, the success depends fully on voluntary contributions from the community of mycologists around the world, and on how well we manage to coordinate these efforts. The core of the project is the web site https://redlist.info/ where all data are entered, commented upon, and further developed. Specific persons will be appointed by the five fungal specialist groups of IUCN to be assessors (and editors) of each evaluated species, i.e. have the right and responsibility to compile and formulate the text for the species ¹.

For 2015, we have received two grants from Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund and the Oscar and Lili Lamm´s Memorial Fund by the Swedish foundation to support travel costs and lodging, respectively, for two red listing workshops at Ekenäs, Sweden.

The following activities are planned

2–4 February: Workshop for European Mycologists. This three-day meeting will finalize evaluations for at least 75 fungal species that most likely will be red-listed at the European level and probably also at the global level. This meetings focus is on well-known threatened species in Europe. The selected species will be evaluated both at the European and global level. Selected species will be highlighted on the web-page prior the meeting (e.g. during December 2014 and January 2015) so that as much data and comments can be compiled prior the workshop. Please contribute. Fifteen invited European mycologists representing basidiomycete, lichenized and nonlichenized ascomycete fungi plus slime molds will be attending. The IUCN fungal specialist groups and the European Council for Conservation of Fungi nominated the participants. Each participant will be responsible with for a set of species. Anders Dahlberg is coordinating and leading this workshop.

20–23 April: International workshop. The focus of this four-day meeting is to assess potentially threatened Agaricomycete species at a global level. They may also be evaluated and red-listed at appropriate continental level. The goal is to finalize evaluations for at least 75 species. The selected species will be highlighted on the web-page prior the meeting (e.g. from February 2015 and onwards) so that as much data and comments can be compiled prior the workshop. Please contribute. Fifteen selected mycologists from North and South America, Europe, and Eastern Asia will be attending. Greg Mueller is coordinating and leading this workshop.

An Austral Asian red listing workshop is being coordinated by Peter Buchannon (New Zealand) and Tom May (Australia). This workshop is tentatively scheduled for the end of June or early July.

A rust and smut fungus red listing workshop will be held in Edinburgh, coordinated by Stephan Helfer and other members of the Rust and Smut Specialist Group.

A red-listing workshop focused on North American Agaricomycetes is being planned for spring 2015. Greg Mueller is trying to obtain funding for that. It may however, turn out to be done virtually.

We encourage the organizations of other regional meetings not covered in one of the scheduled workshops to focus on species from those regions. These could be undertaken physically or virtually. We will support such initiatives as much we can.

Please contact us if you have any comments or suggestions for how the Global Fungal Red List Initiative can be facilitated and accomplished to meet its important goals.

Contact

Anders Dahlberg

anders.dahlberg@slu.se

Greg Mueller

gmueller@chicagobotanic.org