sRedList project

Brief summary

The extinction risk of species is globally monitored by the IUCN Red List (RL). Despite the goal to update extinction risk assessments at least every 10 years, over 21,000  species (ca. 18% of those assessed) currently have outdated assessments. The resources needed to keep assessments up to date present a clear sustainability challenge. Furthermore, even a 10-year reassessment interval is too long to allow timely conservation interventions in many cases, and the application of RL criteria often suffer from inconsistencies across different groups. Several authors have proposed automated methods to conduct preliminary screenings to guide reassessment of species, considering species intrinsic vulnerability (inferred from their traits and other factors), historical trends, and satellite-derived imagery combined with macroecological modelling. So far, however, these approaches have remained largely academic exercises, and have rarely been incorporated in the official RL reassessment routines.
By bringing together RL practitioners and ecological modellers, we aim to develop an innovative, rapid and consistent framework for prioritizing RL assessments. We will build on recent approaches to derive input data for the RL assessment process, for example inferring population decline from satellite-borne estimates of habitat loss. We will automatize the identification of species likely to have changed their RL status. These species would be prioritised for re-assessment, to verify the validity of our predictions and update their extinction risk as appropriate. Prioritizing the reassessment of species will reduce assessors’ workload and deliver faster information for more rapid and effective conservation actions.

The project was funded by iDiv (https://www.idiv.de/en/sredlist.html) and will run between 2021 and 2024.

PIs: Luca Santini, Moreno Di Marco

sRedList working group:

Victor Cazalis (iDiv, Germany)

Carsten Meyer (iDiv, Germany)

Alexander Zizka (iDiv, Germany)

Ana Benitez-Lopez (Doñana Biological Station, Spain)

Aafke Schipper (Radboud University, The Netherlands)

Bruce Young (NatureServe, US), Carlo Rondinini (Sapienza University, Italy)

Manuela Gonzalez-Suarez (Reading University, UK)

Nathalie Pettorelli (Zoological Society of London, UK)

Resit H. Akcakaya (Stony Brook University, US)

Samantha Hill (UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, UK)

Stuart Butchart (Birdlife International, UK)

Theresa Joerger-Hickfang (iDiv, Germany)

Thomas Brooks (IUCN, Switzerland)

Extended network:

Piero Visconti (IIASA, Austria)

Monika Bohm (ZSL, UK)

Mike Hoffmann (ZSL, UK)

Michela Pacifici (Sapienza University, Italy)

Steven Bachman (Kew Gardens, UK)

Pedro Cardoso (Finnish Museum of Natural History, Finland)

Publications

Cazalis V., Di Marco M., Butchart, S.H.M., Akçakaya H.R., González‐Suárez M, Meyer C., Clausnitzer V., Böhm M., Zizka A., Cardoso A., Schipper A.M., Bachman S.P., Young B.E., Hoffmann M., Benítez-López A., Lucas P.M., Pettorelli N., Patoine G., Pacifici M., Jörger-Hickfang T., Brooks T.M., Rondinini C., Hill S.L.L., Visconti P., Santini L. (2022) Bridging the research-implementation gap in IUCN Red List assessments. Trends in Ecology and Evolution ACCEPTED