FLORISTIC INVENTORY: The results !!!
From 2011 to 2014, the association has conducted a program of inventories of St Bart’s fauna and flora. It’s the largest investment of the association since its creation.
On this occasion, three inventories have been launched:
- An inventory of the wild vascular flora in collaboration with professor Claude Sastre, honorary member of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN, Paris).
- An inventory of ants and termites in collaboration with PhD. Léonide Celini, a retired entomologist from the University Paris Est-Créteil.
- An inventory of spiders led by PhD. Patrick Maréchal, a former researcher at the MNHN Paris and founder of the Caribbean Institute for Nature and Culture.
In this program, the inventory of the wild vascular flora was a priority :
- Because flora plays an essential role in the different levels of organization of biodiversity: plant species are indeed the primary producers of nearly all terrestrial ecosystems
- Because the inventory of the flora and the resulting conclusions are an important legal tool in the protection policies and regional planning.
THREE YEARS OF WORK
The flora inventory was conducted over three years, from October 2011 to March 2014, requiring two annual field missions. Eight field campaigns have been led, which resulted in 65 field trips.
The inventory has resulted in several types of work:
- An inventory of the vascular flora (flowering plant & ferns)
- An inventory of indegenous flora (native flora)
- An indigenous flora cartography from satellite images of IGN.
- An herbarium of 1008 sheets coming from 376 species of 86 botanical families at May 31, 2014
FIRST RESULTS
On the territory of 21km² of St Barthélemy, 391 species of vascular plants have been inventoried. Among them :
- 298 are deemed to be indigenous, coming from 84 botanical families
- 32 are “super naturalized” or escaped from garden (originally grown)
- 69 are truly exogenous
- 76 had never been cited for Saint-Barthélemy
THE INVENTORY’S FUTURE
The results of the inventory were transferred in their entirety to the territorial Environment Agency with which the association has concluded a partnership agreement in the autumn of 2013.
These results will be used to complement and support the list of protected plant species of Saint-Barthélemy’s Environment Code.
They also serve as a base for conducting a RED LIST OF ENDANGERED PLANT SPECIES OF SAINT BARTHELEMY based on the IUCN criteria adapted to the territory on which the Environmental Agency is actually working.
The full report of the inventory of Saint-Barthélemy’s vascular flora ( french) is available here