Online Trick

A quick geo-tip:
With the osmar and maptools package you can easily pull an OpenStreetMap object and convert it to KML, like below (thanks to adibender helping out on SO). I found the relation ID by googling for it (www.google.at/search?q=openstreetmap+relation+innsbruck).

# get OSM data
library(osmar)
library(maptools)
 
innsbruck <- get_osm(relation(113642), full = T)
sp_innsbruck <- as_sp(innsbruck, what = "lines")
 
# convert to KML
for( i in seq_along(sp_innsbruck) ) {
      kmlLine(sp_innsbruck@lines[[i]], kmlfile = "innsbruck.kml",
               lwd = 3, col = "blue", name = "Innsbruck") 
      }
 
shell.exec("innsbruck.kml")

A simple example for drawing an occurrence-map (polygons with species' points) with the R-packages maptools and sp using shapefiles.
HERE is the example data.

library(maptools)
library(sp)

# Note that for each shapefile, you only need to read the .shp component
# the others will be read in at the same time automatically.
# TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp contains the political districts of North-Tyrol
# Limodorum.shp contains points with occurences of the plant species
# Limodorum abortivum.
# Note that my layers use the same geographic coordinate systems (gcs),
# using other data you would need to check if the gcs and
# projection of all layers are the same!  

# set dir to where you downloaded the data:
setwd("E:/R/Data/Maps/Example.1_Data")
Limodorum.shp <- readShapePoints(file.choose())
TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp <- readShapePoly(file.choose())

# examine points:
summary(Limodorum.shp)
attributes(Limodorum.shp@data)

# examine polygons:
summary(TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp)
attributes(TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp@data)

# limits:
# to customize ylim in plot-call
# seems not to work here...
xlim <- TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp@bbox[1, ]
ylim <- TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp@bbox[2, ]      
                                           
par(mai = rep(.1, 4))

plot(TIRIS.BEZIDX_PL.shp, col = "grey93", axes = F,
     xlim = xlim, ylim = ylim, bty = "n")
points(Limodorum.shp, pch = 16,
       col = 2, cex = .5)
mtext("Limodorum abortivum", 3, line = -7,
      at = -17000, adj = 0, cex = 2, font = 3)
legend("bottomleft", inset = c(0.4, 0.2),
       legend = c("Fundpunkte", "Polit. Bezirke"),
       bty = "n", pch = c(16,-1),           # bty = "n": no box
       col = c(2, 1), pt.cex = c(.5, 1),
       lty = c(-1, 1))

To cite package ‘maptools’ in publications use:

  Nicholas J. Lewin-Koh, Roger Bivand, contributions by Edzer J.
  Pebesma, Eric Archer, Adrian Baddeley, Hans-Jörg Bibiko, Stéphane
  Dray, David Forrest, Michael Friendly, Patrick Giraudoux, Duncan
  Golicher, Virgilio Gómez Rubio, Patrick Hausmann, Karl Ove
  Hufthammer, Thomas Jagger, Sebastian P. Luque, Don MacQueen, Andrew
  Niccolai, Tom Short, Ben Stabler and Rolf Turner (2011). maptools:
  Tools for reading and handling spatial objects. R package version
  0.8-10. http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=maptools


To cite package ‘sp’ in publications use:

  Pebesma, E.J., R.S. Bivand, 2005. Classes and methods for spatial
  data in R. R News 5 (2), http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/.

  Roger S. Bivand, Edzer J. Pebesma, Virgilio Gomez-Rubio, 2008.
  Applied spatial data analysis with R. Springer, NY.
  http://www.asdar-book.org/

Thanks to a posting on R-sig-eco mailing list I learned of the IUCN-API. Here's a simple example for what can be done with it (output as pdf is HERE):

require(XML)
require(maptools)
require(jpeg)

input = "panthera-uncia"
h <- htmlParse(paste("http://api.iucnredlist.org/go/",
               input, sep = ""))

distr1 <- xpathSApply(h, '//ul[@class="countries"]', xmlValue)
distr2 <- unlist(strsplit(distr1, "\n"))
distr2[distr2 == "Russian Federation"] <- "Russia"

pop <-xpathSApply(h, '//div[@id="population"]/text()[preceding-sibling::br]', xmlValue)
status <- xpathSApply(h, '//div[@id="red_list_category_code"]', xmlValue)

data(wrld_simpl)

pdf("IUCN_map.pdf", width = 10, height = 10, pointsize = 20)
par(mar = c(3, 3, 1, 1))
plot(wrld_simpl, col = "grey98", xlim=c(-170, 170), axes = T)
plot(wrld_simpl[wrld_simpl$NAME %in% distr2,], col = "grey75", add = T)
text(0, 150, gsub("-", " ", toupper(input)), font = 3)
text(0, 130, paste("--Status: ", status, "--", sep = ""))
text(0, -98, "--Population--", cex = 0.5, font = 2) 
text(0, -140, paste(strwrap(pop, width = 30), collapse = "\n"), cex = 0.4)

# download image:
myjpg <- paste(tempdir(), "/", input, ".jpg", sep = "")
download.file("http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Uncia_uncia.jpg/399px-Uncia_uncia.jpg",
              myjpg, mode = "wb")

# read and plot image:
img <- readJPEG(myjpg)
w <- dim(img)[2]/7
h <- dim(img)[1]/7

# print img to plot region:
rasterImage(img, 115, 95, 115+w, 95+h)

graphics.off()

ps: Check THESE nice maps, too!