Fitzroya cupressoides

– Endangered

Taxonomy

Kingdom:	PLANTAE
Phylum:	TRACHEOPHYTA
Class:	CONIFEROPSIDA
Order:	CONIFERALES
Family:	CUPRESSACEAE
Scientific Name:	Fitzroya cupressoides
Species Authority:	(Molina) I. M. Johnston
Common Name/s:	PATAGONIAN CYPRESS (Eng) ALERCE (Spa)

Assessment Information

Red List Category & Criteria:

EN A1cd+2cd ver 2.3 (1994)

Year Assessed:

2000

Assessor/s:

Conifer Specialist Group

History:

1997	-	Endangered (Walter and Gillett 1998)
1998	-	Endangered (Oldfield et al. 1998)

Geographic Range

Countries:

Native:

Argentina (Chubut, Neuquén, Rio Negro); Chile (Los Lagos)

Population

Population:

Alerce has been logged since the middle of the 17th century. The largest concentration of the species, at the southern end of the Chilean depression, was exploited in the 18th and 19th centuries, leaving no remains except blackened stumps. By the early 1900s a third of the Fitzroya forests had been removed. In the 1930s motorised transport and the building of roads allowed access to the stands in the Coastal Cordillera and High Cordillera. Present estimates of the area taken up by remaining stands lie at 20,000 ha, 15% of their original size. Today the best stands may be found between latitudes of 41º and 42ºS in the High Cordillera. Elsewhere populations are small.

Habitat and Ecology

System:

Terrestrial

Threats

Threats:

Exploitation continued at such intensities that chances of regrowth and regeneration are annihilated. Restrictions laid down by the Chilean Government have not been adhered to and illegal logging in remote areas has been impossible to halt.

List of Threats:

1.3.3.3	Habitat Loss/Degradation - Extraction - Wood - Clear-cutting (ongoing)
1.4.2	Habitat Loss/Degradation - Infrastructure development - Human settlement (ongoing)
9.2	Intrinsic factors - Poor recruitment/reproduction/regeneration (ongoing)

Conservation Actions

Conservation Actions:

The species is listed in CITES Appendix I.

Bibliography

Bibliography:

Benoit, C. and Ivan, L. (eds) 1989. Libro Rojo de la Flora Terrestre de Chile. Impresora Creces Ltd, Santiago.

Chebez, Juan Carlos. 1994. Los que se van. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Albatros.

Farjon, A. et al. 1998. Data collection forms for conifer species completed by the IUCN/SSC Conifer Specialist Group between 1996 and 1998.

Global Tree Specialist Group. For more information, see the Specialist Group website

Golte, W. 1996. Exploitation and conservation of Fitzroya cupressoides in southern Chile. In: D.R Hunt (ed.) Temperate Trees under Threat. Proceedings of an IDS Symposium on the Conservation Status of Temperate Trees, 30 Sept.-1 Oct. 1994.

González Cangas, Mauro. 1996. Completed data collection forms for tree species of Chile.

Hilton-Taylor, C. (compiler). 2000. 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

Oldfield, S., Lusty, C. and MacKinven, A. (compilers) 1998. The World List of Threatened Trees. World Conservation Press, Cambridge, UK.

The Nature Conservancy. 1996. Natural Heritage Central Database. (Status and distribution data on Latin American plants, developed in collaboration with Latin American Conservation Data Centers and Missouri Botanical Garden).

Citation:	Conifer Specialist Group 2000. Fitzroya cupressoides. In: IUCN 2007. 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 06 July 2008.
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