Red List of vascular plants of the Czech Republic: 3rd edition

The knowledge of the flora of the Czech Republic has substantially improved since the second version of the national Red List was published, mainly due to large-scale field recording during the last decade and the resulting large national databases. In this paper, an updated Red List is presented and compared with the previous editions of 1979 and 2000. The complete updated Red List consists of 1720 taxa (listed in Electronic Appendix 1), accounting for more then a half (59.2%) of the native flora of the Czech Republic. Of the Red-Listed taxa, 156 (9.1% of the total number on the list) are in the A categories, which include taxa that have vanished from the flora or are not known to occur at present, 471 (27.4%) are classified as critically threatened, 357 (20.8%) as threatened and 356 (20.7%) as endangered. From 1979 to 2000 to 2012, there has been an increase in the total number of taxa included in the Red List (from 1190 to 1627 to 1720) and in most categories, mainly for the following reasons: (i) The continuing human pressure on many natural and semi-natural habitats is reflected in the increased vulnerability or level of threat to many vascular plants; some vulnerable species therefore became endangered, those endangered critically threatened, while species until recently not classified may be included in the Red List as vulnerable or even endangered. (ii) Some increase in the number of species in particular categories can be attributed to the improved knowledge of taxonomically difficult groups for which previously only incomplete species lists were available. In addition, some native species were recently discovered as new to the country’s flora or described as new to science, and the status of their populations made Red-Listing necessary. (iii) Also improvements in our knowledge of the flora made the expert judgment more precise and some species were included in the list because their long-lasting vulnerability was recognized. In contrast, 23 taxa considered extinct or missing were rediscovered. This is almost one third of the number of extinct or missing taxa in the first version of the Red List published in 1979.