The Collapse of the Red Data project

The disturbing facts that every field mycologist should have been told

Michael Jordan

(published in the Summer 2009 issue of The Forayer).

The function of a Red Data list is to provide UK conservationists with a definitive appraisal of fungal species that are threatened or endangered by a variety of external factors.
A brief search of the British Mycological Society website reveals a statement that first appeared there in 2006. "A new Red List for Fungi is being prepared by the British Mycological Society (BMS), working with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). Although some more work is required before it becomes an official Red List, a summary of the preliminary assessment together with threat categories and brief accompanying notes is now available for download. The new list is compiled by Shelley Evans, Alick Henrici and Bruce Ing on behalf of the BMS and replaces the 1992 provisional RDL from Bruce Ing [Chris Cheffings (JNCC); Shelley Evans (BMS), 29/12/2006]"

At the March 13th. meeting of the Fungus Conservation Forum (FCF), the newly elected BMS President, Lynne Boddy, delivered a message declaring, in effect, a complete collapse of the Red Data project with little prospect of any authorative list being published in the foreseeable future.

The minutes of the meeting, dominated by a disproportionately large BMS presence, record: "[The] current list has been available for 4 years therefore is due for review. LB proposed FCF establish a red list committee to prepare a new list and in particular to work with JNCC to agree criteria (based as appropriate on IUCN guidelines). Committee members should include specialists from BMS, ABFG, Kew, JNCC and Country Agencies (agency input focussed on resources and application guidelines but if JNCC are unable to engage then agencies should provide sign off for criteria in order for production of new list to be progressed) - ideally number of members no more than 8. Scandinavian work on list criteria provides sound basis for development of UK criteria. Proposal and committee members agreed [sic].
Natural England is prepared to fund development of new list (funding available in 2010/11 financial year)."

Seventeen years on since Bruce Ing's Provisional Red list, a more objective view of the history differs from that gained by reading either of the carefully-worded BMS or FCF statements. The FCF had previously agreed to review any future Red Data list once every 5 years, but the ‘current list’ has never existed as an authorised document, only as a preliminary assessment that was rejected by JNCC, who complained of insufficient quality, so there is nothing to review in the sense inferred.

The following is an abstract of statements drawn from the minutes of various official meetings:
" BMS Group Leaders Meeting, 1997: The new Red Data list will be made available in 1999.
" BMS Report to the FCF, May 2000: The Red Data list is due to be published soon.
" BMS Report to the FCF, Summer 2001: The Red Data list is almost ready.
" BMS Report to the FCF, November 2002: The text and body of the Red Data list are now complete and only await complete checking of species records to finalise the category listing. Work is progressing intermittently.
" BMS Report to the FCF, November 2003: The authors recently had a useful meeting and it is estimated that it [the list] will take three weeks to put the data together.
" BMS Council Meeting, March 2005: There is concern that the Red Data list is still incomplete and contact will be made with Shelley Evans with a view to expediting production of this important document.
" JNCC (Chris Cheffings) email communication to the ABFG, April 2005: JNCC has rejected the so-called draft on grounds of quality and advises that it should be renamed 'preliminary assessment'.
" JNCC (Chris Cheffings) email communication to the ABFG, March 2006: I have heard that there has been some more recent progress, but I do not know what this progress is.
" JNCC Report to the FCF, July 2006: JNCC has received the current version and requests considerable further work
" BMS Council report December 2006: There is as yet no date for publication of the list.
" BMS Report to the FCF, July 2008: Contact has been made with Alick Henrici and Bruce Ing to discuss how more taxa can be assessed. Shelley asks for volunteers to help.
" Minutes of FCF meeting, July 2008. The Forum has decided that it wants a Red List but it needs to agree how this will be done.
"2009 FCF Strategy Document, The Forgotten Kingdom (page 14): A Red List assessment for all UK fungi should be undertaken.

This kind of perennial procrastination begins to make the whole mycological community in the UK look incompetent and foolish. On 6th March 2009 the ABFG received from the office of the BMS President, Lynne Boddy, an email marked 'High Priority - meeting before the FCF Meeting'. The message proposed 'brokering a deal' in order that 'we can publish an appropriate Red Data list'.
It was felt, however, that any such exchange made in advance of the formal agenda, during which the ABFG presentation of a radical data overhaul was to be the main topic, might not be in the best interests of objectivity. Hence the proposition was not followed up but it was suggested that matters might equally be discussed during the lunch break or at some other convenient time. No response was received and the ABFG has not been given information on the nature of this proposed deal.
One of the perennial weaknesses in the Red Data project must be attributed to lack of transparency. If a project team gives repeated undertakings that project completion is imminent but, in retrospect, it becomes obvious that these undertakings had no chance of being met, loss of confidence and sense of frustration become inevitable. The Red Data project team has issued little or no reliable information and, until the summer of 2008, did not ask for help. The ABFG was not alone in finding it impossible to penetrate the barriers. The terse observation from JNCC in March 2006 is not the first of its kind that the Committee has made. Previously Chris Cheffings asked the ABFG if it could obtain a copy of the proposed list for JNCC since she had been unable to do so.
The project appears to have suffered long term technical and managerial difficulties. Much of this may be down to the quality of the re-branded FRDBI, limited by more than a decade without investment. The FRD is also designed in such a way that the ordinary members of the field community who deliver its raw material cannot then make constructive use of the system, nor can it deliver the kind of sophisticated relational analyses that are now urgently required.
The ABFG has proposed that CATE, in which nearly £20,000 has been invested precisely to deliver the level of functionality which is needed to generate a Red Data list based on agreed IUCN criteria, should take over, but at the same time invite close BMS involvement. There is little point in having two rival databases and a proposed BMS outlay of another £20,000 to match the CATE system makes no sense at all. Mycology is not sufficiently awash with money to justify this kind of duplication. The capability of CATE has been proven. It can generate the analyses needed to meet the originally agreed JNCC criteria without wasting more valuable time attempting to arrive at new criteria that fall within the capacity of an outmoded data system

If we are to make any sense of fungal conservation, to move forward, those determined to impede progress out of a distorted sense of tradition, political motivation or self-interest must be gently but firmly persuaded otherwise or side-lined.

.