IUCN Red List

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  Important Concepts of Conservation Biology

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has organized a global assortment of scientists and research stations across the planet to monitor the changing state of nature in an effort to tackle the extinction crisis. The IUCN provides annual updates on the status of species conservation through its Red List. The IUCN Red List serves as an international conservation tool to identify those species most in need of conservation attention and by providing a global index on the status of biodiversity. More than the dramatic rates of species loss, however, conservation scientists note that the sixth mass extinction is a biodiversity crisis requiring far more action than a priority focus on rare, endemic or endangered species. Concerns for biodiversity loss covers a broader conservation mandate that looks at ecological processes, such as migration, and a holistic examination of biodiversity at levels beyond the species, including genetic, population and ecosystem diversity. Extensive, systematic, and rapid rates of biodiversity loss threatens the sustained well-being of humanity by limiting supply of ecosystem services that are otherwise regenerated by the complex and evolving holistic network of genetic and ecosystem diversity. While the conservation status of species is employed extensively in conservation management, some scientists highlight that it is the common species that are the primary source of exploitation and habitat alteration by humanity. Moreover, common species are often undervalued despite their role as the primary source of ecosystem services. ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ While most in the community of conservation science stress the importance of sustaining biodiversity, there is debate on how to prioritize genes, species, or ecosystems, which are all components of biodiversity (e.g. Bowen, 1999).

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  Imagining Extinction

  The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species

  • Ursula K. Heise(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of Chicago Press

    (Publisher)

  Red Lists, in addition to the usual biological and ecological information contained in general biodiversity databases, classify species according to their risk of extinction. As opposed to purely descriptive databases, they typically have normative and legal force in a state or country: for example, a species that is included in a Red List can be hunted or harvested only within certain limits, it cannot be traded, its habitat cannot be altered in any major way, and measures for its protection have to implemented. States, nations, and supranational organizations such as the European Union all maintain such Red Lists as the basis for endangered species laws and international treaties. Because of the economic impacts and cultural implications that listing or delisting a species can have, the process is dynamic and sometimes politically embattled, as national conflicts over the status of wolves in some western states in the United States and international conflicts over the status of particular whale species at the International Whaling Commission have vividly demonstrated in recent years. Additions to and subtractions from a Red List or changes in the status of a species register a history of such conflicts and of conservationist successes and failures. 4 Arguably the most influential current Red List is that of the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature). As a global database that in 2015 included approximately seventy-seven thousand species, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is an unusual hybrid: with no legal force in and of itself, it has nevertheless become a standard reference work in conservation research and planning all over the world. 5 Through this process, it has acquired an indirect legal influence that has led its administrators to draw up meticulously detailed guidelines on how to use global information in local contexts (see Gärdenfors et al. 2001; Miller et al. 2007; Rodríguez 2008)

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  Species Conservation in Managed Habitats

  The Myth of a Pristine Nature

  • Werner Kunz(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  The harmonisation of the Red Lists was made more difficult by the fact that the lists are mandatory for national legislation in some countries. Only a few European countries, such as Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom adopted the IUCN's modified regionalisation criteria. Other countries, however – Germany included – are still using their own criteria for the classification of endangered species in the endangerment categories of the Red Lists.

  The discrepancy between the use of the IUCN criteria and the national criteria can be partly explained by the fact that geographically small countries, for example, cannot adopt the endangerment criterion which limits the occurrence of a species to a small range. While the IUCN regards the limitation of a species population to a small geographic area as a risk of extinction for the species, this approach naturally cannot be applied to a list system that is only limited to a small area due to political reasons, because the extinction of a species in a politically limited space need not be a threat to the global survival of that species. The golden eagle in Switzerland is one example of this: if the IUCN criteria were used in this case, this bird would be included in the Red List of endangered species, although it is not at all endangered as a breeding bird in Switzerland.

  When the IUCN criteria approach was applied to the Netherlands, the result was that a considerable number of species there would have lost their National Red List status if the IUCN criteria had been implemented; but some species would have had to be newly included in the Red Lists. Only around half of the Dutch species would have overlapped one another in their endangerment category classifications if the previous classification criteria of the Dutch Red Lists had been replaced by the IUCN criteria. The Dutch government subsequently decided to retain its own Dutch Red List classification criteria, but to use the IUCN quantitative thresholds to create a European Red List.

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  Biological Extinction

  New Perspectives

  • Partha Dasgupta, Peter Raven, Anna McIvor(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Threatened to three progressively escalating categories of Threatened species (Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered) and Extinct. Other than the last category, these constitute an expert system of the relative likelihood of how soon species will become extinct in the future, given present conditions. The most important criteria in deter- mining risk are the size of a species’ geographic range and the degree to which the effects of human actions (including climate change) are shrinking its habitat. Other factors include whether humans hunt, collect or kill the species for other reasons. There are two major problems with the Red List: the incompleteness of the data and the inconsistency of the assessments. Incompleteness By January 2017, IUCN had considered 85,604 of >1.7 million named species. Groups of vertebrate animals get the most attention (~45,000), invertebrates constitute another 19,000, while plants ~22,000. Of the 63,303 total animals assessed, 11,923 were judged to be data deficient – meaning there is not enough information to know their status. This often means that they are rare, so that a large fraction of them may be threatened with extinction. Of the remaining 51,380, 1285 were extinct or probably so, while 12,630 were threatened, with 2696 of them deemed critically endangered. Birds, mammals and amphibians constitute ~23,000 of the species assessed and are mostly terrestrial or partially terrestrial species. They are the only groups for which there are comprehensive species dis- tribution maps (www.biodiversitymapping.org). Efforts are expanding the limited data from oceans for which only 2 per cent of species are assessed compared to 3.6 per cent of all known species. Peters et al. (2013) assessed snails of the genus Conus and Carpenter et al.

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  The Conservation Handbook

  Research, Management and Policy

  • William J. Sutherland(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  There are 3 x 3 x 3 = 27 combinations of these (see Fig. 3.2). Those species of either high national threat or inter- national threat were given 'red' listing (36 species), those of low national threat, low international importance and low international threat were clas- sified as 'green' listing (280 species). The remainder were given 'amber' listing (110 species). Note that species that are scarce in Britain but flourishing elsewhere are just given amber listing. The same approach of balancing local and global perspectives has to be adopted at each scale. Even within a reserve or an area it is sensible to consider which species are most important priorities for conservation. Section 3.2.1 describes how global priorities may be set on the basis of degree of vulnerability to extinction. The production of Red Data Books is an essential component of modern conservation. These list the endangered species within a taxo- nomic group. However, for some groups, such as almost all invertebrates, there is currently far too little data to compile a comprehensive and accurate Red Data Book. Many countries have also produced national Red Data Books listing threatened species within the country. This is often a useful step in assessing priorities as well as attracting wider inter- est and opportunities for funding. A common pro- blem with them is that they do not distinguish between local and global importance. 3.3 Prioritising habitats The information on species priorities can be used to determine priorities for which habitats to protect. This can take into consideration the habitat prefer- ences of high priority species, the local and global distribution of each habitat and the local and global threats to each habitat. Once again, the approach is to 29 Hot spots of global biodiversity The great benefits to society from a range of ser- vices provided by natural and seminatural habitats are often underestimated.

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  Protected Area Governance and Management

  • Graeme Worboys, Michael Lockwood, Ashish Kothari, Ian Pulsford(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • ANU Press

    (Publisher)

  International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (2005) Benefits beyond Boundaries: Proceedings of the Vth IUCN World Park’s Congress , IUCN, Gland. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (2010) 50 Years of Working for Protected Areas: A brief history of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas , IUCN, Gland. International Union for Conservation of Nature, United Nations Environment Programme and World Wildlife Fund (IUCN/UNEP/WWF) (1980) World Conservation Strategy: Living resource conservation for sustainable development , IUCN, UNEP and WWF, Gland. International Union for Conservation of Nature, United Nations Environment Programme and World Wide Fund for Nature (IUCN/UNEP/ WWF) (1991) Caring for the Earth: A strategy for sustainable living , IUCN, UNEP and WWF, Gland. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) (2014) The World Database on Protected Areas: August 2014 , UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge. Keenleyside, K., Dudley, N., Cairns, S., Hall, C. and Stolton, S. (2012) Ecological Restoration for Protected Areas: Principles, guidelines and best practices , No. 18, IUCN WCPA Ecological Task Force, Gland. Kelleher, G. (1999) Guidelines for Marine Protected Areas , No. 3, IUCN, Gland. Kelleher, G. and Kenchington, R. (1992) Guidelines for Establishing Marine Protected Areas , IUCN, Gland. Kopylova, S. L. and Danilina, N. R. (eds) (2011) Protected Area Staff Training: Guidelines for planning and management , No. 17, IUCN WCPA, Gland. Kothari, A. (2006) ‘Community conserved areas: towards ecological and livelihood security’, Parks 16(1): 3–13. Kothari, A., Corrigan, C., Jonas, H., Neumann, A. and Shrumm, H. (eds) (2012) Recognising and Supporting Territories and Areas Conserved by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities: Global overview and national case studies , Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD Technical Series No.

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  Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being

  • Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, Miikka Salo, Merja Elo, Jonne Hytönen, Sanna Karkulehto, Teea Kortetmäki, Janne S. Kotiaho, Mikael Puurtinen, Miikka Salo(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Data about the national and regional drivers of extinction threats can be a valuable source of information to identify those human practices (such as livestock farming and ranching, logging and wood harvesting, and the release of effluents) that are most damaging to planetary well-being at regional and national scales, and to justify urgent changes in these actions. This information about the direct drivers of extinction threat is available in the national/regional IUCN Red Lists although the coverage is not yet global. Information from the IUCN Red Lists also helps to identify those ecosystems and processes that require the most urgent protection and restoration actions to improve the viability of threatened species and populations. From Red Lists, it is also possible to construct indices that can be used as surrogate measures for regional and global states and trends in planetary well-being, at least as far as nonhuman nature is concerned. As we have pointed out earlier, the status of populations and species can serve as a good indicator for the integrity of processes that are critical for the satisfaction of the needs of various living systems. The Red List Index (RLI) calculates the average threat status of the set of species included in the index. RLI takes values between 0 (all species extinct) and 1 (all species in the “Least Concern” category). As we define planetary well-being also in terms of the persistence of lineages to the future (see Table 1.2), RLIs for well-chosen sets of species at regional and global scales could be used to measure the status of planetary well-being at different scales (however, extinction threats due to nonhuman causes, such as volcanic eruptions and natural diseases, should not count negatively to the score of planetary well-being)

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  Biology 2e

  • Mary Ann Clark, Jung Choi, Matthew Douglas(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Openstax

    (Publisher)

  As of mid 2017, close to 200,000 named species had been barcoded. Early studies suggest there are significant numbers of undescribed species that looked too much like sibling species to previously be recognized as different. These now can be identified with DNA barcoding. Numerous computer databases now provide information about named species and a framework for adding new species. However, as already noted, at the present rate of description of new species, it will take close to 500 years before the complete catalog of life is known. Many, perhaps most, species on the planet do not have that much time. There is also the problem of understanding which species known to science are threatened and to what degree they are threatened. This task is carried out by the non-profit IUCN which, as previously mentioned, maintains the Red List—an online listing of endangered species categorized by taxonomy, type of threat, and other criteria (Figure 47.16). The Red List is supported by scientific research. In 2011, the list contained 61,000 species, all with supporting documentation. Chapter 47 | Conservation Biology and Biodiversity 1511 Figure 47.16 This chart shows the percentage of various animal species, by group, on the IUCN Red List as of 2007. Which of the following statements is not supported by this graph? a. There are more vulnerable fishes than critically endangered and endangered fishes combined. b. There are more critically endangered amphibians than vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered reptiles combined. c. Within each group, there are more critically endangered species than vulnerable species. d. A greater percentage of bird species are critically endangered than mollusk species. Changing Human Behavior Legislation throughout the world has been enacted to protect species. The legislation includes international treaties as well as national and state laws.

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