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Information about Red List Of Threatened Species

Conservation status
the risk of extinction
Extinction
Extinct
Extinct in the Wild
Threatened
Critically Endangered
Endangered
Vulnerable
Threatened
Lower risk
Conservation Dependent
Near Threatened
Least Concern
Domesticated
See also
World Conservation Union
IUCN Red List


The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data List), created in 1963, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is the world's main authority on the conservation status of species.[1]

The IUCN Red List is set upon precise criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species and subspecies. These criteria are relevant to all species and all regions of the world. The aim is to convey the urgency of conservation issues to the public and policy makers, as well as help the international community to try to reduce species extinction.

Major species assessors include BirdLife International, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre, and many Specialist Groups within the IUCN's Species Survival Commission (SSC). Collectively, assessments by these organizations and groups account for nearly half the species on the Red List.

IUCN Red List is widely considered to be the most objective and authoritative system for classifying species in terms of the risk of extinction[2]

The IUCN aims to have the category of every species re-evaluated every five years if possible, or at least every ten years. This is done in a peer reviewed manner through IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Specialist Groups, which are Red List Authorities responsible for a species, group of species or specific geographic area, or in the case of BirdLife International, an entire class (Aves).[3] There are over 7000 extant species in the 2006 Red List which have not had their category evaluated since 1996.

2006 release

The 2006 Red List, released on 4 May, 2006 evaluated 40,168 species as a whole, plus an additional 2,160 subspecies, varieties, aquatic stocks, and subpopulations.

From the species evaluated as a whole, 16,118 were considered threatened. Of these, 7,725 were animals, 8,390 were plants, and three were lichen and mushrooms.

This release listed 784 species extinctions recorded since 1500 CE, unchanged from the 2004 release. This was an increase of 18 from the 766 listed as of 2000. Each year a small number of "extinct" species are either rediscovered, becoming Lazarus species, or are reclassified as "data deficient". In 2002, the extinction list dropped to 759 species, but has been rising ever since.

2007 release

On September 12, 2007, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) released the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the latest update to their online database of species' extinction risks. In this release, they have raised their classification of both the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla, subspecies gorilla) and the Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla, subspecies diehli) from Endangered to Critically Endangered, which is the last category before Extinct in the Wild, due to Ebola virus and poaching, along with other factors. Russ Mittermeier, chief of Swiss-based IUCN's Primate Specialist Group, stated that 16,306 species are endangered with extinction, 188 more than in 2006 (total of 41,415 species on the Red List).[4] The Red List includes the Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii, in the Critically Endangered category) and the Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus, in the Endangered category.[5]

Categories

Enlarge picture
Summary of 2006 IUCN Red List categories.
Species are classified in nine groups, set through criteria such as rate of decline, population size, area of geographic distribution, and degree of population and distribution fragmentation. When discussing the IUCN Red List, the official term "threatened" is a grouping of three categories: Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable.

1994 categories and criteria

Enlarge picture
1994 IUCN Red List categories (version 2.3), used for species which have not been reassessed since 2001.
The older 1994 has only a single "Lower Risk" category which contained three subcategories: In the 2001 system, Near Threatened and Least Concern have now become their own categories, while Conservation Dependent is no longer used and has been merged into Near Threatened.

Possibly Extinct

The additional category of Possibly Extinct (PE)[6] is used by Birdlife International, the Red List Authority for birds for the IUCN Red List[7]. Birdlife International has recommended PE become an official category. BirdLife International has not stated whether a "Possibly Extinct in the Wild" category should also be added, although it is mentioned that Spix's Macaw has this status. "Possibly Extinct" can be considered a subcategory of "Critically Endangered".

See also

References

1. ^ Nature 389, 436 (2 October 1997) [1]
2. ^ Birds on the IUCN Red List. BirdLife International. Retrieved on 2007-02-01.
3. ^ Establishment of Red List Authorities. The IUCN SSC Red List Programme. Retrieved on 2006-11-12.
4. ^ Yahoo.com, Gorillas now 'critically endangered'
5. ^ IUCN.org news release, Extinction crisis escalates: Red List shows apes, corals, vultures, dolphins all in danger
6. ^ S. H. M. Butchart, et al. Going or gone: defining 'Possibly Extinct' species to give a truer picture of recent extinctions (pdf). Bull. B.O.C. 2006 126A.
7. ^ Birds on the IUCN Red List. BirdLife International. Retrieved on 2007-01-26.

Notes

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External links

conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species continuing to survive either in the present day or the future. Many factors are taken into account when assessing the conservation status of a species: not simply the number remaining, but the
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extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species (although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point).
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Extinct in the Wild (EW) is a conservation status assigned to species or lower taxa, the only living members of which are being kept in captivity or as a naturalized population outside its historic range.
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critically endangered have an extremely high risk of becoming extinct.

IUCN Category

The World Conservation Union (IUCN), widely considered to be the most objective and authoritative system for classifying species in terms of the risk of extinction[1]
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endangered species is a population of an organism which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in number, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters.
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vulnerable species is a species which is likely to become endangered unless the circumstances threatening its survival and reproduction improve. The following is a very small, non-representative fraction of the 8565 species listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
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Threatened species are any species (including animals, plants, fungi, insects, bugs, etc.) which are vulnerable to extinction in the near future.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) is the foremost authority on threatened species, and treats threatened species not as a
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Conservation Dependent (LR/cd) was an IUCN category assigned to species or lower taxa which were dependent on conservation efforts to prevent the taxon becoming threatened with extinction.
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Near Threatened (NT) is a conservation status assigned to species or lower taxa which may be considered threatened with extinction in the near future, although it does not currently qualify for the threatened status.
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Least Concern (LC) is an IUCN category assigned to extant species or lower taxa which have been evaluated but do not qualify for any other category. As such they do not qualify as threatened, nor Near Threatened, nor (prior to 2001) Conservation Dependent.
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Domestication refers to the process whereby a population of animals or plants becomes accustomed to human provision and control. Humans have brought these populations under their care for a wide range of reasons: to produce food or valuable commodities (such as wool, cotton, or
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IUCN

International Organization
Founded October 1948, Fontainebleau, France
Headquarters Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland

Key people Mr Valli Moosa
Ms Julia Marton-Lefèvre
Industry Natural resource conservation
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The conservation movement is a political and social movement that seeks to protect natural resources including plant and animal species as well as their habitat for the future.
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species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
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extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species (although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point).
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BirdLife International (formerly known as the International Council for Bird Preservation) is the international conservation organization working to protect the world’s birds and their habitats.
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The United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre or UNEP-WCMC is an executive agency of the United Nations Environment Programme, based in Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
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Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field.
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BirdLife International (formerly known as the International Council for Bird Preservation) is the international conservation organization working to protect the world’s birds and their habitats.
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Aves
Linnaeus, 1758

Orders

About two dozen - see section below

Birds (class Aves) are bipedal, warm-blooded, egg-laying vertebrate animals.
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In botanical nomenclature, variety is a rank below that of species: As such, it gets a ternary name (a name in three parts).

A variety will have an appearance distinct from other varieties, but will hybridize freely with those other varieties (if brought into contact).
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Fish stocks are subpopulations of a particular species of fish, for which intrinsic parameters (growth, recruitment, mortality and fishing mortality) are the only significant factors in determining population dynamics, while extrinsic factors (immigration and emigration) are
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population is the collection of people or organisms of a particular species living in a given geographic area or mortality, and migration, though the field encompasses many dimensions of population change including the family (marriage and divorce), public health, work and the
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Plantae
Haeckel, 1866[1]

Divisions

Green algae
  • Chlorophyta
  • Charophyta
Land plants (embryophytes)
  • Non-vascular land plants (bryophytes)

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Lichens (IPA: /ˈlaɪkən/)[1] are symbiotic associations of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont also known as the phycobiont) that can produce food for the lichen from
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