Project for a Red List and country assessment of Italian Bryophytes.

Italy represents a biodiversity hot spot in the Mediterranean area. To monitor and defend its great “natural patrimony”, coherently with the Europe Strategy for Plant Conservation (EPCS, 2002) and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2020 (2011), the Italian Ministry of Environment, land and sea protection supported a national project to compile the first Red List of Italian flora (Rossi et al. 2013) according to IUCN criteria (2001), coordinated by the Italian Botanical Society. For Italian bryophytes the first red lists were compiled by Cortini Pedrotti & Aleffi (1992) for mosses and Aleffi & Schumacker (1995) for liverworts and hornworts. To update these lists the Working Group for B…