California
Department of Fish and Wildlife
Natural
Diversity Database
SPECIAL
VASCULAR PLANTS,
BRYOPHYTES, AND LICHENS
LIST
July
2013
Citation: California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Natural Diversity
Database.
July 2013. Special Vascular Plants, Bryophytes, and Lichens List.
Quarterly publication. 73 pp.
SPECIAL PLANTS
Last updated July, 2013
“Special Plants” is a broad term used to refer to all the plant taxa
inventoried by the
Department of Fish and Wildlife’s California Natural Diversity Database
(CNDDB), regardless
of their legal or protection status. Special Plants include vascular
plants and high priority
bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts). A few lichens are also tracked.
Special Plant
taxa are species, subspecies, or varieties that fall into one or more of
the following categories:
- Officially listed by California or the Federal Government as
Endangered, Threatened, or
Rare;
- A candidate for state or federal listing as Endangered, Threatened, or
Rare;
- Taxa which meet the criteria for listing, even if not currently
included on any list, as
described in Section 15380 of the California Environmental Quality Act
(CEQA) Guidelines;
these taxa may indicate “None” under listing status, but note that all
CNPS Rank 1 and 2
and some Rank 3 and 4 plants may fall under Section 15380 of CEQA.
- A Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or U.S.
Forest Service
Sensitive Species;
- Taxa listed in the California Native Plant Society’s Inventory of
Rare and Endangered
Plants of California;
- Taxa that are biologically rare, very restricted in distribution, or
declining throughout their
range but not currently threatened with extirpation;
- Population(s) in California that may be peripheral to the major
portion of a taxon’s range
but are threatened with extirpation in California; and
- Taxa closely associated with a habitat that is declining in California
at a significant rate (e.g.
wetlands, riparian, vernal pools, old growth forests, desert aquatic
systems, native
grasslands,
valley shrubland habitats, etc.).
This list contains taxa that are actively inventoried
by the CNDDB (Note: Taxa
mapped in the GIS have a “yes” in the right column of
the list) as well as an almost
equal number of taxa (mostly Rare Plant Rank 3 and 4)
which we track but for
which we only currently have quad and county level
geographic information. For
the latter taxa, we maintain site and other
information in manual files along with Internet
access to the quad and county level information via
our “CNDDB Quick Viewer.” These
plants will be mapped as time permits or when we have
enough information to determine that
they fulfill our rarity and/or endangerment criteria.
For more copies of this list or other
CNDDB information, call (916) 324-3812 or email
Kristine Spencer, Information Services, at
Kristine.Spencer@wildlife.ca.gov.
California Heritage (CNDDB) Element Ranking
For Plants
Last updated July, 2013
All Heritage Programs, such as the California Natural
Diversity Database (CNDDB) use the
same ranking methodology, originally developed by The
Nature Conservancy and now
maintained and recently revised by NatureServe. It
includes a Global rank (G rank),
describing the rank for a given taxon over its entire
distribution and a State rank (S rank),
describing the rank for the taxon over its state
distribution. For subspecies and varieties, there
is also a “T” rank describing the global rank for the
subspecies. The second page of this
document details the criteria used to assign element
ranks, from G1 to G5 for the Global rank
and from S1 to S5 for the State rank. Procedurally,
state programs such as the CNDDB develop
the State ranks and the Global ranks collaboratively
among states/provinces containing the
species. NatureServe then checks for consistency and
logical errors at the national level.
An element rank is assigned using standard criteria
and rank definitions. This standardization
makes the ranks comparable across organism and
political boundaries. NatureServe has
developed a “rank calculator” to help increase
repeatability and transparency of the ranking
process. The three main categories that are taken into
consideration when assigning an
element rank are rarity, threats, and trends. Within these
three categories, various factors are
taken into consideration including:
Range extent, area of occupancy, population size, number of occurrences
and number of
good occurrences (ranked A or B). Environmental
specificity can also be used if other
information is lacking.
Overall threat impact as well as intrinsic vulnerability (if threats are
unknown).
Long-term and short-term trends.
Detailed information on the newest element ranking
methodology can be found here:
http://natureserve.org/publications/library.jsp
With the above considerations in mind, refer below for
the numerical definitions for G1-5 and
S1-5. An element’s ranking status may be adjusted up
or down depending upon the
considerations above.
