Dr. Nisha Owen is Executive Director at the environmental and climate justice funder Global Greengrants Fund UK, a conservationist with almost two decades of experience championing locally-led efforts ...
IUCN SSC Phylogenetic Diversity Task Force
Overview and description
Description:
Group leadership
Dr Nisha OWEN
Dr. Nisha Owen is Executive Director at the environmental and climate justice funder Global Greengrants Fund UK, a conservationist with almost two decades of experience championing locally-led efforts to value and conserve the natural world for the benefit of communities and future generations. Nisha played an integral role in the rapid establishment and growth of charitable foundation On the Edge as Director of Conservation. Previously, Nisha worked at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), developing the EDGE of Existence programme into its current incarnation as a ZSL flagship, as well as developing innovative online capacity building initiatives with United for Wildlife and National Geographic Society. Nisha Chairs the IUCN SSC Phylogenetic Diversity Task Force, sits on the Conservation Advisory Panel of the World Land Trust and serves as Trustee for London Learning Foundation, improving the wellbeing of disadvantaged communities in the UK. She holds a PhD from the University of Leeds on human-wildlife conflict in south India.
More about the Task Force
The IUCN SSC Phylogenetic Diversity Task Force (‘PDTF’) aims to provide leadership and guidance on the inclusion of phylogenetic diversity (PD) in conservation strategies.
Conserving the Tree of Life and our evolutionary heritage: Phylogenetic diversity (PD) measures the evolutionary history captured by a set of species and therefore describes a fundamental aspect of biodiversity; the diversity of features produced by the course of evolution (Faith 1992). The ...
The PDTF promotes the importance of conserving phylogenetic diversity, and so the tree of life and our evolutionary heritage.
Task Force work
The PDTF supports implementation and provides guidance and advice for practitioners and decision-makers on appropriate PD approaches, incorporating PD into policy and encouraging scientific research and conservation applications that will add to the knowledge base.
Measuring success of PD-based conservation
PDTF develops state-of-the-art methods for measuring and categorising the success of conservation.
Incorporating Phylogenetic Diversity into policy
PDTF supports knowledge-exchange to advance adoption of Phylogenetic Diversity prioritisation.
Promoting the importance of the Tree of Life
PDTF shares information and enhances the understanding of the Tree of Life.
Annual Report
Learn about PDTF’s work and results in 2023.
Previous reports:
PDTF Annual Report 2022
PDTF Annual Report 2021
PDTF Annual Report 2019
Projects of the Task Force
The PDTF has developed two indicators for monitoring our success at conserving the tree of life, which can be used in national and global conservation policy. These have been submitted for consideration in the CBD post-2020 biodiversity framework. The indicators explicitly and uniquely interlink Goal A (preventing extinctions and improving conservation status) and Goal B (valuing nature’s contributions to people), filling an important current gap in the draft monitoring framework relating to Nature’s Contributions to People, as well as the lack of linkages with IPBES’s work to date. Our indicators recognise both phylogenetic diversity as a valuable aspect of biodiversity, and the neglected species that represent our evolutionary history; enabling conservation, measurement and monitoring into the future. Read about the indicators.
In a celebration in all things weird and wonderful, the PDTF participated in a panel discussion held at the IUCN WCC, Reverse the Red Pavilion on the 7th of September, 2021. The panel was chaired by Monni Bohm of the Indianapolis Zoo and attended by Nisha Owen of On the EDGE, Roseli Pellens of the Muséum National d’Histoire naturelle, Andrew Terry of the Zoological Society of London and Barney Long of Re:wild. The speakers shared theirs views on why we should concentrate conservation efforts on conserving overlooked species across the tree of life.
The PDTF provides technical expertise to the SSC EDGE grant, which supports assessments and action planning for evolutionarily distinct species and lineages among the IUCN SSC groups. The PDTF provides up-to-date lists of priority species, expertise and guidance, which has to date led to a wide selection of projects that include under-represented taxa as well as promoting the involvement of range-state practitioners.