Jose Luis Vivero is currently a Food Security officer at FAO HQs in Rome, with previous experience in Guatemala, Ethiopia and Georgia. He has been leading the Red List Initiative since 2000, which aims to assess the threat status of the Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea. This initiative achieved preliminary results in September 2003, with a paper containing 596 redlisted taxa presented during the AETFAT meeting in Addis Ababa. Recently, The Red Lists of Endemic Trees & Shrubs of Ethiopia and Eritrea has been just published. He has carried out taxonomic research in Afroalpine flora and has co-authored a chapter on the “Ethiopian Highlands” in the CI book on Biodiversity Hotspots. Previously, he was a researcher in the Córdoba Botanical Garden (Spain), working with threatened plant species of Andalucía. Member of the IUCN/SSC Global Tree Specialist Group, working at present with threatened trees of Ethiopia and Guatemala, where he directs a project to prepare the Red List, funded by FFI, UK. 5.- INTRODUCTION Ethiopia possesses one of the richest assemblages of plants in the entire Africa. In this mountainous and geologically active territory, Afromontane habitats and Somali-Masai savannas among others have blended to create a special regional identity. The elevation of the important mountains, as well as the longlasting environmental stability of eastern savannah lowlands, allowed the evolution and diversification of the flora. All this has given rise to a unique and remarkable flora with numerous endemics. The country exhibits an enormous variety of plants and animals, many of them endemic to this area (Fjeldså & Klerk 2001, Friis et al. 2001, Friis et al. 2003, Hillman 1993, Vivero 2001, Williams et al. 2004, Yalden & Largen 1992). The Flora of Ethiopia has a truly unique environment for its region and this, together with its isolation, has been a potent stimulus for rapid speciation in its colonists (Kingdon 1989). Ethiopia has a wild flora of some 7000 taxa, including subspecies as well as species (Vivero et al. 2005a). The region has been a crossroads for important plant migrations from different regions. The whole Horn of Africa region is not just rich in endemic species but also in native populations of useful or economically important plants and their relatives (Zohary 1970) At present, the Ethiopian flora, like that of so many African countries, faces a multitude of threats: fuelwood and charcoal logging, forest encroachment, fire, agricultural development and the construction of large public works, excessive grazing, and over-collection of species for commercial use among others. Extinction processes may be hastened by the extremely narrow distribution and limited ecological tolerance of some species. Scanty information on threatened Flora Although Ethiopia, including Eritrea, has been considered a minor core area for endemism and biodiversity (Davis et al. 1994, Hamilton 1982, Harlan 1969), its importance as a threatened biodiversity hotspot has not been duly acknowledged due to the scanty, outdated and incomplete knowledge about its flora and fauna (Vivero 2003). Thus, out of the 25 terrestrial hotspots identified by Myers et al. (2000), neither the Ethiopia-Eritrea Highlands nor the Horn of Africa as a whole were deemed to meet the criteria to qualify as biodiversity hotspots. However, in the latest analysis led by Conservation International, the Horn of Africa, including the offshore island of Socotra, is considered a biodiversity hotspot in its own right, while the Ethiopian Highlands are considered as one of three primary components in the Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot (Mittermeier et al. 2004) Despite the incredible species richness and endemism of the Horn of Africa flora and the high rates of habitat destruction due to civil conflicts, natural hazards, and subsequent people displacement, only 56 plant species are included in the 2004 IUCN Red List (IUCN 2004), all of them woody plants, only 20
Conservation International
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Conservation Status of Endemic Plants of Ethiopia