Helen Chadburn

Species Conservation Assessor

Department

Team

Specialism

Species Conservation Assessor working with the IUCN Red List to assess extinction risk of plants such as Coffea and New Guinea orchids

Biography

I work with the Plant Assessment Unit at Kew, accelerating the number of plant species which have been assessed for their extinction risk and that are represented on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. We are assessing many tropical plant groups that are currently underrepresented on the IUCN Red List including Coffea, orchids of New Guinea and plants that are important to orangutans in Borneo. Collaborating closely with the experts here at Kew, my research involves analysis of species distributions, their population status, habitat, ecology, uses, threats and existing conservation measures in order to produce assessments.

Qualifications and appointments

BSc (Joint Honours) Botany Geography, Univ. Durham
MSc Plant Diversity, Univ. Reading, 2008

Selected publications

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species assessments: for example Freycinetia awaiarensis (2016), Carex chinensis (2016)

Brummitt, N., Bachman, S. P., Aletrari, E., Chadburn, H., Griffiths-Lee, J., Lutz, M., Moat, J., Rivers, M. C., Syfert, M. M. & Nic Lughadha, E. M. (2015).

The Sampled Red List Index for Plants, phase II: ground-truthing specimen-based conservation assessments.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 370: 1662.

Brummitt, N., Bachman, S., Griffiths-Lee, J., Lutz, M., Moat, J., Farjon, A., Donaldson, J., Hilton-Taylor, C., Meagher, T.R., Albuquerque, S., Aletrari, E., Andrews, A.K., Atchison, G., Baloch, E., Barlozzini, B., Brunazzi, A., Carretero, J., Celesti, M., Chadburn, H. et al. (2015).