9 December 2021
Jack Plummer
Plant Assessment Co-ordinator
Department
Team
Conservation Assessment and Analysis
Specialism
Species conservation; extinction risk; Red List assessment
In my role, I facilitate the submission of extinction risk assessments by Kew scientists and collaborators to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
This involves day-to-day co-ordination of Red List assessment projects, increasing assessment capacity through conducting training workshops, communicating species extinction risk to a broad audience, and liaising with IUCN and other stakeholders engaged in conservation assessment activity worldwide.
In recent years, I have also written many extinction risk assessments for selected plant groups, especially crop wild relatives and medicinal plants, including a global assessment of Musaceae (bananas).
Through documenting the extinction risk status of species, we can more effectively prioritise conservation activities to protect plants and fungi, and mitigate the ongoing extinction crisis.
- BSc Biology, University of Warwick
- MSc Biotechnology, Bioprocessing and Business Management, University of Warwick
-
Adapting agriculture to climate change
Collecting and protecting the wild relatives of the world’s most important food crops to safeguard our future food security in a changing climate.
-
Global Tree Seed Bank Programme
Conserving some of the world’s rarest, endangered and useful tree and shrub species as well as conducting vital tree conservation research in order to retain a significant resource for humanity.
-
Medicinal and aromatic plants of Pakistan
Traditional herbal remedies are still widely used in Pakistan, yet many medicinal plants are threatened by unsustainable levels of harvesting, habitat degradation, climate change and a lack of regulation.
-
Threatened Biodiversity Hotspots programme
Seed collecting and building in-country conservation capacity in five biodiverse hotspots in seven countries.
-
Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAs)
Identifying and mapping Tropical Important Plant Areas in critical sites for plant conservation across the tropics.
WWF (2020)
Living Planet Report 2020 - Bending the curve of biodiversity loss.
Almond, R.E.A., Grooten M. and Petersen, T. (Eds). WWF, Gland, Switzerland.
Marcer, A, Haston, E, Groom, Q, et al. (2020)
Quality issues in georeferencing: From physical collections to digital data repositories for ecological research.
Divers Distrib. 2021; 27: 564– 567.
