Threat and protection status analysis of the alpine flora of the Pyrenees

Threat and protection statuses have been analyzed for the Alpine vascular flora of the Pyrenees, i.e., species that live mainly 2,300 masl (Alpine and Subnival levels). They have been cataloged as 387 different taxa (onwards: Alpine Flora Catalogue, AFC), many of them of conservationist interest, especially in the Iberian context, due to the abundance of endemisms and relict populations. This analysis presents an added difficulty derived from this territory’s administrative situation. The region extends over three countries: Spain, France and Andorra. The first two are divided into four autonomous communities and three regions, respectively. Threat and protection statuses have been assessed according to the presence of AFC species in Red Lists (Spain: RL 2010, Andorra: RL 2008 and France: RL 2012) and catalogues of protected species. In the latter case, it has been analyzed at national level (Spain: LWSSPR-SCTS and France: LPPSNT) and regional level: Spanish autonomous communities and French regions. Andorra lacks catalogue of protected flora. Results demonstrate that, of the 387 AFC species, 46 (12%) are included in some of the national red lists: 8 Spain, 30 Andorra and 13 France. None of the 8 Spanish threatened species appears in the LWSSPR, and in France only 3 of the 13 threatened are protected. In Andorra, none. With respect to threat status: 11 are CR (2 Spain + 9 Andorra +1 France); 11 EN (1 Spain + 8 Andorra + 2 France) and 27 VU (5 Spain + 13 Andorra + 10 France). At national level, there are 14 protected taxa: 3 Spain, and 13 France. Atregional level, there are 52 protected taxa in some of the lists from Spain and 47 from France, The Basque Country and Midi-Pyrenees are the AACC with more number of protected species.

Administratively the territory is distributed in three countries: Spain, France and Andorra.In turn, the Spanish Pyrenees form part of 4 autonomous communities: Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia; and the Pyrenean-French zone is divided into 3 regions: Great Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrenees and Languedoc-Roussillon.
The object of study is the alpine flora of the Pyrenees due to its interest from a scientific, biogeographic and conservationist point of view (Körner, 1999;Sáinz Ollero & Moreno Saiz, 2002).It is understood as alpine flora (Braun-Blanquet, 1948;Vigo, 1976;Sesé & al., 1999) those found above the 2,300 masl (Daniel & al., 2017), i.e., above the treeline econote or Crioro-Mediterranean life zone, at the alpine and subnival levels (Figure 2).These groups include taxa that live exclusively from 2300 m asl, that is, the sensu stricto of the alpine bioclimatic [2300-2600 (2800) m asl] and subnival levels [> 2800 m asl], and also, species that live on the alpine and subnival levels, but also, inhabit lower altitudinal levels.
As is known, not always endangered species are legally protected, therefore the main objective of this study has been to analyze the degree of threat and legal protection of the vascular alpine flora of this territory.
To do so, it has been necessary first to elaborate the Alpine Flora Catalogue (AFC) (Appendix 1), which has analyzed the degree of coherence between the lists of threatened and protected species.As the study area covers three countries: Spain, France and Andorra, and the first two are divided into four autonomous communities and three departments, respectively, the analysis have been done at different scales: i) at national level (Spain and France) and ii) at regional level: Spanish autonomous communities and French departments.Andorra lacks a catalogueof protected flora.

Materials and Methods
In order to achieve the main objective, a catalogue of species whose distribution area is located above the alpine treeline ecotone, but also, those species that although live in lower levels also reach the 2300 m asl, has been elaborated.To include a species in this catalogue it has been stabilished that atleast 40% of its citations must be above 2300 m asl, in all databases.The reason why this very restrictive criterion has been chosen in the development of the AFC has been to achieve greater reliability in the results.
The AFC has been elaborated using information extracted from different databases; Gómez (2016); Villar (2001) and Anon. (2012-2015).The criterion adopted in terms of taxonomy and nomenclature, is the one used by Anon.(2005b), which mainly follows the terminology proposed by Tutin & al. (1964Tutin & al. ( -1980)), being the general and complete work of reference that covered the territory of study, andCastroviejo (1986-2016).The terminology used for the vegetation levels has been established according to Rivas-Martínez's (1987) classification.Subsequently information of each of these taxa has been collected: their degree of threat and their protection status.

Threatened species
The information on the degree of threat of each of the taxa has been extracted from the Red Lists (RL).These RL are catalogues scientifically developed according to the categories and criteria established by IUCN elaborated by the IUCN National Plant Committees.Thus, this study has been developed considering three red lists: Red List of Spanish Vascular Flora (Moreno, 2010); Check-List and Red List of Andorran Flora (Carrillo, 2008) and Red List of Threatened Species in France (Anon., 2012).We have considered that a taxon is threatened when it is included in any of the categories CR, EN or VU in any of the RL published to date.A database has been developed with the gathered information; analizing which AFC taxa are threatened in each country and if there are any resemblances between them.

Protected species
To evaluate the degree of legal protection of each taxon, catalogues of protected species have been revised.These catalogues have been reviewed throughout the whole territory, both at state level: France and Spain, as well as a regional level: Spanish autonomous communities and French regions.For each of the taxa, the protection category has been recorded.
At national level, Spain boast the List of wild species in special protection regime (LWSSPR; LESRPE in Spanish) in which, the Spanish catalogue of threatened species (SCTS; CEEA in Spanish) (Anon., 2011b), is located.The species included in this listing have a generic degree of protection common to all, and those that are also threatened are included in the SCTS.These threatened species are classified as in Endangered (EN) or Vulnerable (VU).
France has the List of protected plant species throughout the national territory (LPPSNT; LEVP in French) (Anon., 2013).These species are in both the Appendix 1: Strictly protected species (SPS) and Appendix 2: Protected species (PS), collection or harvest subject to authorization by the Government, the first one presenting a greater degree of protection.Andorra lacks any kind of list.
At regional level, the Spainsh Pyreness are represented byfour autonomous communities, each of them with their own catalogue: The Basque Catalogue of Endangered Species (Anon., 2014), the Navarre Catalogue of Endangered Species (Anon., 1997a), the Aragonese Catalogue of Endangered Species (Anon., 2005) and the Catalan Catalogue of Endangered Species (Anon., 2015).As for France, the Pyrenean territory is divided in three departments with the following catalogues; List of protected plant species in the Aquitaine region (Anon., 2002), List of protected plant species in the Midi-Pyrenees region (Anon., 2004) and List of protected plant species in the Languedoc-Roussillon region (Anon., 1997b).
The analysis of the degree of legal protection of each taxon has been carried out both at national and regional level for both countries, attempting to notice any possible resemblances between them.

Comparison between threatened and protected species
Given the information and databases created for protected and threatened species, the next step of this proyect was to contrast this information and examine de coherence between the IUCN catalogues of threatened species and the legally protected species, at regional and national level, for both France and Spain.

Results and Discussion
Alpine Pyrenean vascular flora includes almost 9% of the total number of species that live in this territory, thus, the AFC accounts with 387 species out of a total of 4334 (Appendix 1).Using this criterion some species have been left out of the study due to their presence has been considered accidental (Tejero & al., 2017) or lack of data.
The taxonomic analysis of the AFC shows that the families with the highest number of taxa are distributed as follows: there are a total of 56 families, of which the family with the highest number of taxa is the Poaceae, with 36, close of 9%.It is followed by the Composite with 33 species (8.5%), the Cruciferae with 27 species (7%), and the Cyperaceae with 26 species on the total, that is, almost 7% as well.The predominant functional groups of AFC are hemicriptophytes and camefitas with 317 species (82%).This flora is also closely linked to its habitat not only from the ecological point of view but also for its conservation.We can find a greater taxonomic abundance in grasslands, meadows, mountain scree slopes, rocky and grassy habitats.
The taxa that inhabit exclusively from 2300 m, constitute 7% (28) of the AFC.About 5% ( 21) are exclusive to the Alpine zone and almost 2% (7) of the Subnival zone.These results show that 92.6% (359) of the AFC can also be found in lower altitudinal levels.

Threatened Species
The list of AFC species included in the RL of the three countries adds up to 46, 12% of the total (Appendix 2).By country, Andorra stands out with 30 species, followed by France with 13 and Spain with 8 (Table 1; Figure 3).The sum of these taxa amounts to 51, which is due to the fact that the species listed in Table 2 appear at the same time in more than one RL.In Spain and France there is a low number of CR and EN taxa with respect to VU, while in Andorra, although the largest number of species are categorized as VU, there is a higher percentage of species labeled as CR and EN.An inducing factor of this situation may be the type of land use, since winter sports in this country cause great pressure on alpine species (Pladevall, 2016).
Table 1.Total number of AFC species of the three RL for each category.A remarkable fact is that none of the species are found in the three RL at the same time.The vast majority, 41 taxa, are found in only one list and five in two of them at the same time ( Among the red lists of the study, the Andorra RL has the highest number of threatened species.In the CR category there are 9 taxa and some are in the process of degrowth and restricted in the Pyrenees, such as Xatardia scabra or Aquilegia pyrenaica (Carrillo, 2008).With the category of EN there are 8 and the remaining 13 are VU.In the french list, Brassica repanda subsp.turbonis, considered as a Pyrenean endemic subspecies (Gruber, 2014), stands out as the only species CR; while, Phyllodoce caerulea and Subularia aquatica (Penin & al., 2003) are classified as EN; the 10 remaining species are VU.

Protected Species
Of the 387 species studied, 81 (21%) are considered to be protected under a protection law in some of the lists and catalogues of protected species of the countries and regions belonging to the Pyrenees (Appendix 3) and 30 of them are protected at the same time in both countries.With the exception of Andorra that, despite the high number of taxa threatened (Carrillo, 2008), it lacks an official catalogue of protected flora among its legislation.

Analysis at national level
At national level, 14 species are protected (4% of the catalogue): In Spain there are few protected taxa, only 3 being listed in the LWSSPR; Two of them Androcase cylindrica and Ranunculus parnassiifolius are laveled with the highest category, EN, and only one of them, Androsace pyrenaica (Goñi & al., 2006) is cataloged as VU according to the SCTS, that is, the lowest protection category established in this catalogue.In contrast, in France 13 taxa are protected under the maximum category of SPS according to the LPPSNT and there are no species under the PS category.Whereas only two species are found in both catalogues at the same time; Androsace pyrenaica and A. cylindrica (Table 3).

Ranunculus parnassiifolius EN
Vicia argentea SPS Number of species 3 13 2. Analysis at regional level

Spain
The 52 Spanish protected taxa are listed (Appendix 3), as different categories depending on each autonomous community (AACC), in the four autonomic catalogues: the Basque Country has the highest number of protected species: 26, followed by Aragon and Catalonia with 15 and, Navarre with 3. (Table 4; Figure 4).Moreover, 9 are protected in several catalogues at once (Adonis pyrenaica, Androsace pyrenaica, A.cylindrica, Diphasiastrum alpinum, Draba fladnizensis, Leontopodium alpinum, Minuartia cerastiifolia, Saxifraga clussi and Subularia aquatica).Ranunculus parnassiifolius stands out as it does not appear in any of the regional catalogues but nevertheless it is protected nationally in the LWSSPR.
Only Diphasiastrum alpinum, in Navarre, has the maximum category (EN) in contrast to the majority, which are found as VU in all of the regional catalogues.This fact correlates with the low number of protected taxa at national level.
The Basque Country stands out because it is precisely the autonomous community with the highest number of protected alpine taxa and it is surprising since its mountains do not reach the altitudes defined in this paper.This is due to the fact that they are species with tolerant ecological amplitude, which is to say that, eventhough they are alpine species, they are able to reach lower altitudinal levels (Aizpuru & al., 2001;Garmendia & al., 2014).

France
In regard to the French Pyrenees, there are 47 protected species (Appendix 3), of which, 32 are included in one of the lists of protected species of the three French departments, LPPSNT.Therefore, the list of protected species in the Great Aquitaine ( None of the alpine taxa present in the French regional lists of protected species coincide with each other or with the national list.In addition, they are not classified in different categories which make it difficult to know the status of each of them, as well as the comparison of a species with its equivalent in the Spanish slope.

Comparison between threatened and protected species and their analysis of consistency between catalogues
Having analyzed the situation of threat and protection of the alpine flora of the Pyrenees, it has been calculated how many of the threatened species are protected and which ones are not.Of the 8 threatened species present in the Spanish RL only 3 are protected in some catalogue, and of the 13 present in the French RL, 5 are protected (Moreno, 2010;Anon., 2012), reflecting a low degree of coherence between the RL and protection catalogues.The nonexistence of the Andorran list is even more incoherent than the lacking number of protected species in the two adjacent countries (Figure 5).
As can be seen in Table 6, the degree of coherence between threat and protection catalogues in the Pyrenees is scarce.The list of AFC species included in any of the RL of the three countries adds up to 46, while only 7 (2%) are nationally protected.Excluding Andorra from the analysis, as it lacks a protection catalog, the degree of coherence increases, although it is still insufficient since, of the 20 species that are threatened in Spain and France, only 7 are protected in a catalog.Vicia argentea is striking because it is the only taxon that is simultaneously threatened under the same category (VU) in Spain and France, but it is also protected in both countries.Reasonable fact given its high degree of endemicity and, therefore, its great conservationist interest (García & al., 1994).

National level in Spain and France
None of the threatened species are protected in Spain according to the LWSSPR, and only two are protected in France according to the LPPSNT (Table 7).At national level, the degree of coherence between the catalogues is also low and Vicia argentea, again, is the only species that brings some coherence to the catalogues of endangered and protected species.In both countries, the VU category has the highest number of threatened plants, although none are protected in Spain, and in France only Vicia argentea and Adonis pyrenaica, the latter with a certain degree of rarity, which is consistent with the degree of protection (Carreras & al., 1996).

Regional level in Spain and France
Establishing the same parallelism in the regional analyses for the threatened vascular plants in each country against their degree of protection, it should be noted that the 3 threatened species in Spain (Appendix 4) are protected in Aragon (Androsace helvetica, Carex bicolor and Vicia argentea), and their protection categories are VU, CR and VU, respectively.It is interesting to note that, although these plants are present in the four AACC, they lack protection in the rest of the AACC as well as at national level.At regional level in France (Appendix 4), the situation is similar to Spain, as only three of the threatened species, present in the French regions, are only recorded on the list of protected species of the Midi-Pyrénées (Subularia aquatica (EN), Thymus praecox (VU) and Alyssum cuneifolium (VU)).These two countries correctly protect only 3 species according to their degree of presence and, again, the predominant category of protection is VU.These results denote a great inconsistency between catalogues and possibly a lack of effort by these governments to ensure the survival of alpine plant species.Threatened taxa that must be protected Given this situation, a list of species that are not protected but should be legally protected due to the degree of threat established by IUCN is proposed.All species that, according to the IUCN, are cataloged in the three main categories of threat (CR, EN and VU) should be protected.The inclusion of these threatened species -not protected-, will be carried out according to their order of priority, that is, in first place, those labeled as CR, and then those as EN and VU, respectively, following the inclusion criteria established in Law 42/2007 (Anon., 2007).For each country, the geographical distribution of each threatened species will be analyzed, reviewing its conservation status (CS) and establishing its corresponding scale of protection; at national, regional or other level (Anon., 2011).Under these criteria, the list shown in Table 9 is proposed, with 42 species, of which, Brassica repanda subsp.turbonis, Carex bicolor, Silene borderei and Vicia argentea should be mentioned.These 4 species, as a consequence of being contempleted in Aragon under the category 'Special Interest' (S.I.), deserve additional protection and surveillance.Similarly, the evaluation and monitoring will be carried out not only of the proposed species, but also of all the AFC taxa, in view of a possible modification of their CS.(Garmendia & al., 2014).In France, the Midi -Pyrenees should be highlighted as the region with the most number of protected species: 22.
Regarding coherence between threatened and protected species catalogues, of the 8 present in RL2010, 3 are legally protected, but not at national level in the LWSSPR, in France only 5 of the 13 RL2012 threatened are protected (2 LPPSNT + 3 regional level), and in Andorra, due to the absence of an official list, the species are unprotected.Excluding Andorra from the analysis, the degree of coherence increases, although it is still insufficient since, of the 20 species that are threatened in both Spain and France, only 7 are protected in a catalogue at the same time.
The protection of this flora is complex due to the administrative situation of the territory.Given this reality, it would be adequate to develop the list of protection, proposed in this paper, common and cross-border covering the territories of the Pyrenees.To accomplish this, it will be necessary to periodically review the AFC, keep it updated and be able to continue with the investigation of this variety of flora, as well as the evaluation and periodic monitoring of its conservation status.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map showing the delimitation of the Pyrenees.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Delimitation of the alpine or supraforest or Crioro-Mediterranean life zone.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.Total number of AFC species of the three RL for each category.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Number of threatened vs. protected species in any catalogue

Appendix 4 .
Threatened species in Spain and France according to the RL, their presence in their regions and their degree of protection.Pres = presence; Prot: protected.

Table 2
(Villar & al., 2001) considered VU(Villar & al., 2001)in both countries: Spain and France, and Brassica repanda subsp.turbonis in CR in Andorra and France.The rest of the taxa do not match in regards to category.Highlighted in the Spanish RL are Aquilegia pyrenaica as it is the only EN species and Carex bicolor and Carex lachenalii subsp.lachenalii labeled as CR, against the remaining five classified as VU.

Table 2 .
Matching AFC species in the three RL and their categories.

Table 3 .
Species protected at national level in the lists and catalogues of protected species of Spain and France.

Table 4 .
Protected species at regional level in Spain.

Table 5 .
Protected species at regional level in France.

Table 6 .
Threatened and protected species in some catalogue in Spain and France.

Table 7 .
Threatened species in Spain and France according to the red lists, and their degree of protection at national level.

Table 9 .
Threatened species that should be protected Androsace pyrenaica and A. cylindrica coincide in the two catalogues.At regional level there are 51 in Spain and 34 in France.In Spain, the Basque Country stands out as the autonomous community with the highest number of protected flora: 26, "in most cases, Basque populations are located at much lower altitudes compared to Pyrenean populations, which suggests that they are isolated and relict populations"