Conservation Management Recommendations
The next stage of our assessment involved developing a table of conservation management recommendations named “Genetic Conservation Management” (Supplement S1). This table used a life history trait analysis to evaluate two major in ecological restoration practices: failing to capture genetic diversity during sampling and the potential issues associated with mixing populations (i.e., donor selection). Following the framework of Neaves (2019), we adopted their risk definitions and recommendations for ecological restoration while expanding on them by incorporating EBVs into our discussions. Sampling risks were assessed based on the genetic diversity and genetic differentiation EBVs: species with high genetic diversity and low differentiation were assigned a low risk of sampling limited diversity, species with moderate differentiation were considered at moderate risk, and species with low diversity and high differentiation species were classified as high risk. Donor selection risks were primarily informed by genetic differentiation EBVs and distribution data from the Botanical Society of the British Isles (2024b). Species with low differentiation and widespread and continuous UK distributions were considered low risk of mixing; those with high differentiation were assigned moderate risk; and species with high differentiation and/or narrow and fragmented UK distributions were deemed high risk of mixing.