Botanical capacity in Guinea was limited until after 2000 when there was renewed interest in plant collection and training of botanists. As a result, botanical knowledge within Guinea remains lower than neighbouring countries despite its botanical diversity being much higher. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew will work with partners from the National Herbarium of Guinea, the Centre Forestière Nzérékoré and Guinée Ecologie to identify unnamed Guinean plant specimens, capture colonial specimen data from the Paris Herbarium, and gather private specimen records, with the goal of adding thousands of new records to the Global Biodiversity Information Framework (GBIF). By providing training to Guinean botanists in plant identification and Red List assessments this project will enable the completion of Red Listing for all of Guinea’s threatened plant species. The project will develop a threatened flora identification guide to be made available to fieldworkers to increase their capacity to accurately recognize and identify threatened species. In addition, training in and development of threat Risk Registers for Important Plant Areas in Guinea will be made available online to help inform natural resource management and conservation policy decisions.

The project will directly support African 30-by-30 goals to use best science and data for decision-making, by significantly enhancing the data available on Guinean threatened plant species. This data will be used by partners, government agencies, and other organisations to increase awareness of threatened species and inform policy decisions during the life of the project and beyond.

The primary goals for this project include:

Goal 1: Identification of unnamed Guinean specimens (includes suspected new species); Guinean scientists capable in taxonomic identification and species description.
800 unidentified specimens named by Guinean botanists from HNG with RBG Kew taxonomic expert support/training and uploaded to GBIF by Guinean GBIF Focal Point (Saidou Doumbouya).
Five rare new species to science will be submitted to scientific journals with Guinean botanists as first authors.

Goal 2: Private Guinean specimen records and georeferenced historical records are collated and available to all. Kew will work with HNG and Guinée Ecologie to achieve this.
6,000 records will be added to GBIF by the Guinean Focal Point (Saidou Doumbouya)

Goal 3: Most threatened but un-redlisted/out-of-date species Red List will be assessed.
40 new or updated Red List assessments accepted for publication on iucnredlist.org. The majority are to be written in French by Guinean Red List assessors.

Goal 4: Guinean fieldworkers will be trained to accurately identify threatened plant species.
A hardcopy electronic field identification guide to Guinea Red data plants will be produced and distributed to stakeholders.
60-80 people will participate in trainings by Kew and HNG on rare plant identification and Vegetation Survey Techniques.

Goal 5: Guinea has capacity to develop threat registers for protected areas, and existing registers available to all.
30 Guineans trained in threat data collection and register assembly;
Threat registers for 10 Important Plant Areas will be developed and made available online.

Charlotte Couch is the project coordinator for the Tropical Important Plant Areas of Guinea for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and is Technical Advisor to the National Herbarium of Guinea. She first visited Guinea in 2005 and since 2017 has split her time equally between the UK and Guinea to manage joint projects focussed on the conservation of threatened plants and developing partnerships and collaborations. She teaches on the National Herbarium of Guinea masters programme and delivers courses on vegetation survey techniques to partner organisations abd is also a co-chair of the West African Plant Red List Authority. Couch earned her MSc. degree in Plant Diversity (Biodiversity and Conservation) from the University of Reading.