Post on 26-Jul-2020
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species:
Celebrating 50 years
Background, lessons learned,
and challenges
David Allen
Regional Biodiversity Assessment Officer,
Global Species Programme, Cambridge
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
THE ORIGINS OF THE IUCN RED
LIST OF THREATENED SPECIES
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Proceedings and papers:
International Technical
Conference on the Protection of
Nature, Lake Success, NY, 22-29
August 1949
• Resolution 15: Called for the
establishment of a “survival
service” (became the Species
Survival Commission)
• Resolution 16: Listed threatened
animals (13 birds and 14
mammals) of international
importance – a “proto-Red List”
Humble Beginnings…
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
1964: The IUCN Red List is born -
A "Preliminary List of Rare Mammals" and a "List
of Rare Birds" are complied and published
1969
1970s:
thematic &
national lists
1964
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
2000 2015
www.iucnredlist.org
Renowned but (often) misunderstood
Global “GOLD STANDARD” for
informing conservation action
We did a lot!
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
THE RED LIST TODAY
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The IUCN Red List• A framework for classifying species according
to extinction risk
• The starting point for conservation action
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Our Goal
To catalyse action for biodiversity conservation
by providing information and analysis on the world’s
species including threats, population status and trends
© ebatty Flickr
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
THE IUCN RED LIST
A scientific tool for supporting policy change
and communicating conservation needs and
outcomes
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
World’s most comprehensive information source for
extinction risk of species
• Not just a list, but a compilation
of conservation information on
species at the global level
• Based on the best scientific
information available
• Widely used to inform and
influence biodiversity
conservation
What is the IUCN Red List?
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
HOW IS IT COMPILED?
Illustration copyright Bob Diven
Red List Categories & Criteria
Categories
Thresholds
Criteria
Red List assessment process
• Approach differs depending on who is running the assessment
• Data collection
• Expert workshops
• ‘Peer review’ and Red List Authority
• Quality control: Red List Unit, Red List database + website
• Publication on www.iucnredlist.org
Who is involved?
• The IUCN Red List is produced by the IUCN Global Species
Programme working in close partnership with the IUCN Species
Survival Commission (SSC), Red List Partners and some Members
• Based on contributions from a global network of nearly 10,000
scientific experts
The IUCN Red List partnership
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Introduction to the IUCN Red List
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Regional and National
Red Lists
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The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Applications,
Challenges and
Lessons Learned
Expanding the representation of the Red List
Camera trap in Sumatra: National Geographic
Beyond charismatic megafauna and hand-
picked assessments
• Number of species on the Red List is increasing – but NOT all
threatened
• Increasing taxonomic coverage
• More than 25,000 reassessments in last 4 years
• Increasingly, more complete taxonomic groups are being assessed
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Proportion of extant species on the Red List for the comprehensively
assessed groups (left) and the sampled groups (right)
Comprehensive assessments
Spatial data
2010
20062008
2012
Informing species-specific
conservation actions
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Action Asia Campaign
• Aims to focus funding on vertebrates identified as threatened
• Joint programme with European Association of Zoos and Aquariums
ALLIANCE FOR THE CONSERVATION OF LARGE ANIMALS IN ASIA
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
A response to an emergency call from nature
Improve the status of threatened species and
their habitats
Create a global coalition to build the biggest
species conservation fund, supporting on-the-
ground field conservation projects all over the
world.
Drive positive change
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Mohamed Bin Zayed Species
Conservation Fund
Important Bird Areas
Important Plant Areas
Alliance for Zero Extinction sites
Freshwater KBAs
Key Biodiversity Areas
Centre for Mediterranean
Cooperation & GSP:
Freshwater KBAs in the
Mediterranean basin (N
Afr & E Med)
Identifying Sites for
Conservation Action
Source: Darwall W., Carrizo, S., Numa, C., Barrios, V., Freyhof, J. and Smith, K.
2014. Freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas in the Mediterranean Basin Hotspot.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Red List data informs
global conventions
Convention on Biological Diversity
2010 Biodiversity Target (adopted 2001):
biodiversity decline should be halted with the aim of
reaching this objective by 2010
CoP 10 (Nagoya, Japan) set the agenda for next ten
years – Global Strategy on Biodiversity with 20 Aichi
Targets. Red List data informs several targets.
Red List data
contributes to
measuring progress
of many Aichi
targets
Red List Index
Shows trends over time in
projected extinction risk of sets
of species
Can be calculated for any set of
species that have been
assessed at least twice
Based on proportion of species
in each RL category and
proportion moving between
categories owing to genuine
status changes
tracks progress towards the 2010 CBD target
used to report against the UN Millennium Development Goal 7:
‘ensure environmental sustainability’.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
National RLIs
Gärdenfors (2010), Pihl and Flensted (2011), Lopez (2011), Juslén et al. (2012), Szabo et al. (2012); Rodriguez et al. (in prep).
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Safeguard Policies and
Certification Schemes
Performance Standard 6:
Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable
Management of Living Natural Resources
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Lessons learnt
The value of the Red List and all its supporting data for guiding
conservation decisions, policy and funding (it is still one of the few
datasets around that can be used for this and for monitoring
outcomes).
Who can use the data and who pays? IUCN Knowledge Products are
“public goods” and as such should be freely available; but this does
not mean that we cannot charge for commercial use of the data -
IUCN Policy on Commercial Use of Data, Red List Terms of Use, and
licensing agreements developed with commercial companies either
directly or through subscriptions to IBAT. So making data available for
commercial use was a huge learning process.
External use of data Re-posting of data on other external sites through
written and time-limited agreements.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Lessons learnt
Fine–tuning the assessment process through workshops has been a
big learning process for us – we have learnt how to run workshops
efficiently and have gained good facilitation skills along the way by
doing workshops. But always the problem of lack of formal training.
Learnt much about handling the media and the use of social media to
promote the Red List and are now exploring other avenues to promote
the Red List and conservation of species through art, etc.
We cannot take the results from one taxonomic group to act as a
surrogate for other groups – the threats, the proportions threatened and
concentrations of where most threatened species are vary enormously
between taxonomic groups.
Training Resources: we cannot go around the world providing Red List
Training courses: a wide network of trainers is needed, plus the online
Training System.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Challenges
Expanding taxonomic coverage and increasing representation within
groups – SRLI, comprehensive assessments
Managing and speeding up assessment and RL publication process
Reassessments – funding, ‘expert fatigue’ and capacity (citizen
science and wiki/e-forum approaches)
Red List languages – planned, but complex! French, Spanish and
Portuguese initially, Chinese, Bahasa Indonesia later.
Take up of data and the need to keep it current – e.g., CBD and the
Aichi Targets, IFC standards
Value of RL of Species in relation to RL of Ecosystems (Habitats)
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Red List on-line journal - all assessments downloadable as PDFs with
unique doi numbers. Citable and retrievable.
Moving to continuous updates – rolling publication.
Updating and maintaining infrastructure - SIS and the RL websites
(single platform); increased volume of assessments, improved
functionality, improved download and data access functions.
Integrating the Red List with the other IUCN Knowledge Products
Integrating the Red List with other key external sites (e.g. links to CITES
and CMS databases; better linkage to GBIF, linkage to Species+)
Spatial data and data access
Funding
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™
Communications Challenges
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
1. Most are not threatened
2. Not just species (infra-taxa and regions)
3. Dealing with incomplete coverage
4. Capturing transitory audiences
5. Shifting the focus from the “cute and fluffy”
6. Getting politicians and public fully engaged
7. Making optimal use of social media
8. Making the web site more user-friendly for
non-technical users
Over 70,000
so far
Our target is to make
Stuart et al. 2010. The
barometer of life. Science
328:177–177
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Barometer of Life video
IUCN Red List video