On 18 January, the Spanish Society of Plant Conservation Biology (SEBICOP) and the Flora Commission of the Spanish Committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) presented a training campaign for volunteers to monitor the populations of protected Spanish flora.

With this event, both entities, with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation, have closed the International Year of Biological Diversity.

Among others, Isabel Mateu, director of the Botanical Garden of the University of Valencia, and Inés López, coordinator of the IUCN Spanish Committee, participated in the event.

The event addressed topics such as the role of volunteers in biodiversity data collection, the validation of field observations, the Atlas of Threatened Flora initiative, and the World Year for Biological Diversity project: training volunteers for the detection and census of protected flora populations.

Within the framework of this project, SEBICOP and the IUCN Flora Commission will carry out four training courses in spring in territories with the presence of threatened flora (Canary Islands, Andalusia, Valencian Community and Madrid). In addition, they will carry out a sampling with volunteers in each of these places to census the populations of protected flora and will develop a website where fans can search and provide information for this purpose.

This initiative is coordinated by the Spanish Committee of the IUCN and has the collaboration of the Biodiversity Foundation.