Heritage Survey Results
Replies from 26 States
1. Are any bryophytes listed for protection or tracked in your State? (15 yes, 11 no)
- Arkansas - no
- Delaware – yes
- Florida - no
- Georgia – no
- Louisiana – no
- Maine – no
- Maryland – no
- Michigan – no
- Minnesota – yes
- Mississippi - yes
- Missouri - yes
- Nevada – yes
- New York – yes
- North Carolina - yes
- North Dakota – yes
- Oregon- yes
- South Dakota – no
- Tennessee – yes
- Texas - yes
- Utah – no
- Virginia - yes
- Washington - yes
- Wisconsin – draft stage only
- Wyoming – no
- New Hampshire - yes
- Vermont--yes
2. Are you in consultation with bryophyte taxonomists in shaping your lists and rankings for bryophytes in your State? (14 yes, 12 no)
- Arkansas - no
- Delaware - yes
- Florida - no
- Georgia - no
- Louisiana - no
- Maine - no
- Maryland - no
- Michigan - no
- Minnesota – yes
- Mississippi - no
- Missouri – yes
- Nevada - yes
- New York - yes
- North Carolina - yes
- North Dakota – no
- Oregon- yes
- South Dakota - no
- Tennessee - yes
- Texas – no
- Utah – no
- Virginia - yes
- Washington - yes
- Wisconsin – yes
- Wyoming – yes
- New Hampshire - yes
- Vermont— yes
3. When was the most recent bryophyte related/inclusive survey performed by your Heritage Program? (11 never, 5 minimal, 9 recent)
- Arkansas - never
- Delaware – minimal currently
- Florida - never
- Georgia – some recently
- Louisiana - never
- Maine - never
- Maryland – beginning
- Michigan - never
- Minnesota – recently completed
- Mississippi – 1981/1982
- Missouri – never
- Nevada - current
- New Hampshire - 2005
- New York – never
- North Carolina - recent
- North Dakota – never
- Oregon- 2005
- South Dakota – never
- Tennessee - recently
- Texas - never
- Utah – never
- Virginia – minimal currently
- Washington - 2005
- Wisconsin – recently
- Wyoming – 2004
- Vermont - 2004
4. Are there any efforts toward monitoring of bryophyte populations in your State? (25 no, 1 yes)
- Arkansas – minimal or none
- Delaware – no
- Florida - no
- Georgia - no
- Louisiana - no
- Maine - never
- Maryland - no
- Michigan - no
- Minnesota - minimal
- Mississippi - no
- Missouri - no
- Nevada – no
- New Hampshire - no
- New York – no
- North Carolina - no
- North Dakota – never
- Oregon- yes
- South Dakota - no
- Tennessee - minimal
- Texas – no
- Utah - no
- Virginia - no
- Washington - no
- Wisconsin – no
- Wyoming – no
- Vermont - no
5. Would you have any other comments or suggestions to provide regarding bryophyte conservation in your State?
None – Utah, Arkansas, Maine, North Dakota, Minnesota, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Florida
New Hampshire - Yes. While it is true that it is difficult enough to raise funds to advance priority work for tracheophytes and natural communities, Heritage programs should not be content medium to long term to ignore bryophytes, lichens, and fungi. It is part of our mission and responsibility to help advance work in these taxonomic groups. We should also not ignore the coarse-filter function and utility of natural communities in framing and prioritizing inventory and conservation work for these groups as we do for tracheophytels: much (but not all) of the the diversity and ecology specific taxonomic groups and rare species can be related to natural communities, which can help focus attention on the broader contexts and conditions individual species are responding to.
While it may be difficult or take many years for the network to get to a point where bryophyte surveys are a standard aspect of much or all survey work done, bryophyte work can still be done in a targeted or selective way. For example, work can be initiated or focus on natural communities and geographic areas that have higher potential to yield rare bryophytes (e.g., circumneutral cliffs and wetlands, alpine areas etc). Also, Heritage programs should build in-house capacity to do bryophyte work, and collaborate with and support bryophyte work by taxonomists that advance our ability to list and monitor status of bryophytes.
Vermont - We need to look for the presence of species that occur in surrounding states but have not been found here yet. We also need to look for species known only historically. Review of some questionable specimens (those probably misidentified) needs to be done to refine our list and ranks. We need to include bryophytes better in the development review process.
Nevada – need to find genus-level common names for most of the mosses to increase awareness and conservation measures
New York – want to have bryophytes listed on the rare vascular plants and a separate moss list so they can be better protected; need to find genus-level common names for most of the mosses to increase awareness and conservation measures
South Dakota - We are still at the inventory stage and do not have a statewide checklist, although we could probably cobble together a reasonable list for the Black Hills. Steven Churchill (Mo Bot Gdn) and Jan Janssens (at least formerly at U of MN) along with Eric Grimm (IL State Museum) have done some recent collecting in the state.
Missouri - WE USE A DIFFERENT STANDARD FOR RANKING BRYOPHYTE OCCURENCES AS HISTORICAL DUE TO THE LACK OF FIELDWORK FOR THE GROUP RELATIVE TO VASCULAR PLANTS (50 YEARS VS 25 YEARS).
Michigan - SUPERB AND WELL CURATED COLLECTIONS EXIST IN STATE HERBARIA, BUT THERE IS NO COMPREHENSIVE, STATEWIDE TREATMENT PUBLISHED. AT THE VERY LEAST, AN ATLAS THAT GIVES THE DISTRIBUTION OF ALL OF THE STATE'S KNOWN SPECIES WOULD BE EXTREMELY USEFUL, AND SERVE AS A STARTING POINT FOR ASCERTAINING THE STATUSES OF ALL OF OUR DOCUMENTED TAXA. HAVING AN ATLAS WOULD ALSO ENCOURAGE COLLECTING TO DOCUMENT MANY PRESUMED DATA GAPS. THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF EDUCATION THAT NEEDS TO TAKE PLACE TO CATALYZE INTEREST IN CONSERVING THIS SPECTRUM OF BIODIVERSITY.
Oregon - We have always had a flexible attitude toward listing, preferring to list and de-list as needed, rather than never listing at all because of a fear of insufficient EO data. Uncertainty is standard procedure when dealing with nonvasculars, but it is better to proceed in spite of the uncertainty than to wait for more complete data that for many species won't materialize in our lifetimes.
Louisiana - I am personally not very enamored of making lists of species to conserve, at least in the forest service context. There is too much ground to cover with our general work described below, to do much species by species monitoring. I would prefer to preserve and enhance the habitat.
Texas - Since Texas is now tracking bryophytes, a more intensive review of the other potentially rare or endemic taxon is in need.
Wyoming - I believe that Wyoming is behind most other states in documentation of the bryology flora, so the comments below have limited relevance elsewhere.
Georgia - There is a need for bryophyte forays and for accurate state checklists. A popular newsletter on bryophyte conservation sent to vascular plant conservationists with opportunities for regional forays would be useful. Look forward to upcoming Flora of North America bryophyte volumes.
Washington - There is interest, but little funding, in improving our tracking of rare mosses. As a program we do not devote much energy to them, but encourage bryologists to review our working list and submit sighting forms for the species that we track.
Mississippi - I have been led to believe by conversations with Dr. Reese and others that coastal plain species such as MS do not offer enough diversity of habitats to have truly rare and or endangered species with the possible exception of the Trachyxiphium. I don't expect any change until an academic bryophyte taxonomist type locates permanently or long term to the state and with the present situation, don't know when that will be.
Maryland - I agree with Michigan's point regarding an Atlas. I do think a major hurdle is education. Not only are bryophytes the opposite of the "Charismatic Mega Fauna" but even among our own small community of botanist few care about bryophytes. A source of frustration I have is in the lack of training available. Only when more people are aware of what bryophytes are and how to identify them, will people care about their conservation.
Delaware – the funding is just not there for intensive surveys.
Virginia - Very little use has been made of bryophytes when making land purchase decisions, but at least two species: Orthotrichum keeverae and Campylopus carolinae have been talked about a fair bit and pointed to as additional reasons for protecting properties. The frustration for many people is the idea that species considered endemic to a region or "rare" could conceivably be found to have a larger global range. Claiming a list of species to be rare may backfire in terms of public perception if we list them on less than perfect information and then find them to be common.
