Between March 2020 and 3rd September 2020, partners of the Global Tree Assessment submitted 5,507 tree Red List assessments to the IUCN Red List of Threatened species. In the last few weeks you may have seen @GTA_GTSG tweeting about the IUCN Red List Submission deadline and all the partners who have contributed assessments to this effort. But what does this mean for the Global Tree Assessment?

 

 
The Global Tree Assessment accepts assessments for trees throughout the year. However, to get these published on the IUCN Red List they have to be submitted through the IUCN SIS Database by a particular submissions deadline to be included in the next IUCN Red List update. The IUCN Red List publishes updates on average three times a year. The submissions deadline is a few months prior to this update and all assessments to be included in this publication have to be submitted, so there is time for the IUCN Red List Unit (IUCN RLU) staff to review the assessments. The workflow is illustrated below (and more information is availbale on the IUCN Red List Website).
 

 
During August, GTA did a big drive for tree assessments on twitter and over email to make sure as many assessments were submitted as possible by 3rd September, the IUCN submission deadline for the final update of 2020. This was the final moment to get as many trees as possible into the the next IUCN Update (Update 2020.3) and on to the IUCN Red List by the end of 2020. This was an important deadline for GTA, as having as many tree assessment published as possible in 2020 will show how far we have come since the start of GTA in 2015 and the success of the initiative.

Therefore, we are pleased to announce that since the beginning of August GTA submitted over 2,500 tree assessments for publication, including 1,632 assessments in the three days of the 1st, 2ndand 3rd of September. And, due to the steady flow of partner submitted assessments since the beginning of the year, a total of 5,507 tree assessments were submitted for publication in IUCN Red List Update 2020.3. This marks our largest submission of tree assessments yet!
 

 

We are so grateful to the hard work of all our partners, GTSG members, tree assessors and reviewers and red list authorities without whom submitting over 5,500 assessments to the IUCN Red List would not have been possible. Some partners achieved record numbers of submissions and we are hoping that the next IUCN Red List update will feature assessments for nearly all Papua New Guinea endemic species and hundreds of assessments for trees from Colombia, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Venezuela, Madagascar, Brazil and the Philippines and also for Lamiaceae, Lauraceae, Euphorbiaceae and Annonaceae. Immense progress has also been made for tree assessments in Panama, Peru, Jamaica, the Guianas shield, India, Sabah, Australia, Samoa, French Polynesia, Mexico, the USA, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Somalia. It will also feature some of the first assessments from the recently established DD workflow and also outstanding assessments from the LC workflow, which began in 2018.

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE INVOLVED!