GTA – Global Tree Assessment

GTA – Completing the Global Tree Assessment worldwide

Partner: BGCI – Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Years: 2018-2023

The goal of the Global Tree Assessment (GTA) is to ensure that conservation assessments for all tree species are available to policy makers and conservation practitioners. The primary output will be the publication of global assessments for all tree species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species by 2022.

Information compiled for the GTA will be incorporated into an interim high profile summary report in 2020 as part of the 2020 Aichi Target outputs. By 2020, conservation assessments of all 60,000 known tree species will be assembled with an anticipated 47,000 of the assessments published on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. For the remaining 13,000 species, assessments from equivalent national Red Lists as included in BGCI’s ThreatSearch database will be used. The report will be presented at the CBD COP in China in 2020. Plans will be in place (post-2020) for the remaining 13,000 tree species assessments to be updated and global assessments published on the IUCN Red List by 2022.

To ensure a lasting legacy of the Global Tree Assessment, GlobalTreeSearch, will be expanded and enhanced to provide an online portal for tree information that will guide and monitor conservation action for all tree species. This will be complementary to the IUCN Red List website and enable monitoring of in situ and ex situ conservation of threatened tree species (through field surveys undertaken by the Global Trees Campaign and other tree conservation initiatives), and in response to the requirements of the Convention on Biological Diversity producing synthesis data, country by country, to show overall progress on tree conservation efforts at an international level.