ThreatSearch is a global database of all known conservation assessments for plants. It contains global, regional and national conservation assessments for plants from a variety of sources. The aim of ThreatSearch is to be a one-stop shop to find any conservation assessment for plants.

ThreatSearch was created in 2015 as a tool to collate non-IUCN Red List Assessments for trees, to support the Global Tree Assessment, but the scope of the database has expanded to include all vascular plants as far as possible and non-vascular plants where available. It directly contributes to the aim of the Global Tree Assessment, to have a conservation assessment for every tree species in the world. ThreatSearch can be used to measure progress toward several targets of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, in particular Target 2 (An assessment of the conservation status of all known plant species, as far as possible, to guide conservation action). Data from ThreatSearch has been used to monitor the state of biodiversity, for example in the upcoming State of the World’s Plants and Fungi report by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Living Planet report by WWF.

The database was made available to the public via the BGCI website in January 2017 and the database now contains 363,969 assessments. Since the beginning of 2019, 39,809 assessments have been added to the database. As well as IUCN Red List assessments, this includes national red lists from countries such as Bolivia, Colombia and Japan, assessments in taxonomic revisions including Cremastosperma (Annonaceae), Croton sect. Cleodora (Euphorbiaceae) and Solanum (Solanaceae), and assessments included in the descriptions of newly described species. It is encouraged that authors include preliminary conservation assessments in the publication of newly described species to facilitate the production of IUCN Red List assessments and raise conservation awareness of these species that are often threatened.

We are continuously updating ThreatSearch with new assessments and seeking publications to add to this resource. Please get in touch if you are aware of any assessments missing from our database.

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Please cite any use of ThreatSearch data as:
BGCI. [YEAR ACCESSED]. ThreatSearch online database. Botanic Gardens Conservation International. Richmond, UK. Available at https://tools.bgci.org/threat_search.php. Accessed on (DD/MM/YYYY).