View on bryophyte conservation in Peninsular and Balearic Spain: analysis of Red Lists and legal protection

Current knowledge on the bryophyte flora of Peninsular and Balearic Spain has been highly improved in the past decades, yielding to a still evolving list of 1143 taxa (862 mosses, 5 hornworts, 276 liverworts). Despite its low endemicity (a scarce 0.5% of the bryophyte flora), the Spanish enrolment, both by researchers and by administration, is key in bryophyte conservation science and protection, since it hosts over 40 species that are exclusive or extremely rare both at a European scale and worldwide. The state of bryophyte conservation in Peninsular and Balearic Spain is discussed through comparison of the three national Red Lists already published (1994, 1996, 2014) with the legal protection lists at different scales (European, national and regional). There are 271 threatened species according the current Peninsular and Balearic Spanish Red List. They represent the 24% of the Bryophyte flora, while in the first Red List published in 1994 they were only the 10%. Only 79 taxa are listed in all existing national and regional catalogues. In other words, only 29% of all 271 threatened bryophyte taxa are under certain level of protection in Balearic and Peninsular Spain.