Bog bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus pinnatus) COSEWIC assessment and status report: chapter 12

Existing Protection or Other Status Designations

NatureServe (2002) has assigned a global rank of G4G5 for this species. This ranking indicates that, on a global scale, the plant is considered to be "apparently secure, but may have restricted range or possible long-term concerns".

In British Columbia, the British Columbia Conservation Data Centre in the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management has ranked L. pinnatus as “S1” and placed it on the “Red list”. A provincial rank of “S1” indicates that the species is "critically imperiled because of extreme rarity (5 or fewer extant occurrences or very few remaining individuals) or because of some factor(s) making it especially vulnerable to extirpation or extinction". This is the most critical status that can be applied to a species at the provincial level.

Currently no specific legislation protects rare and endangered vascular plants in British Columbia. While the population of L. pinnatus located in the Woodley Range Ecological Reserve is protected, to a certain extent, by its location within an ecological reserve, only 7% of the total Canadian population is present at this site. Plants at this location are vulnerable to adjacent land uses including all-terrain vehicle use, logging and other land clearing activities. Logging operations adjacent to the core population increase the potential for colonization by aggressive invasive plant species that can then spread into the adjacent ecological reserve. The extant populations of L. pinnatus on private property at Harewood Plains are also vulnerable to habitat destruction from commercial development and intensive use by off-road vehicles.

In California, L. pinnatus has been assigned a subnational rank of “S?” indicating that the rank has not been assessed, presumably due to its apparent large distribution (Bittman pers. comm. 2003).  In Washington, Oregon and Idaho, the species has a subnational rank of ‘SR’. This designation is intended to indicate that the species is “reported for the state, but without persuasive evidence for either accepting or rejecting the report”. However, the existence of verified collections with precise location data invalidates this rank. In Oregon, it appears that the plant should be more properly ranked S3S5 based on information provided by Natural Heritage Program Botanist, Sue Vrilikas (Vrilikas, pers. comm. 2003). There is insufficient information available to determine the true status of this plant in Washington State. In Idaho, the plant should be ranked S1 based on the single collection specimen available (Mancuso, pers. comm. 2003).

 

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