For species in the red, IUCN’s new Green Status signals conservation wins

For species in the red, IUCN’s new Green Status signals conservation wins

Subject :Environment

Section : Biodiversity

IUCN Green Status

• The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the global standard for assessing the risk of extinction that individual species of animal, fungus, and plant faces.
• To achieve this, the Red List assessment process has been expanded to include new classifiers of species recovery and conservation impact, known as the Green Status of Species.
• The IUCN Green Status of Species complements the Red List by providing a tool for assessing the recovery of species’ populations and measuring their conservation success.
• IUCN Green Status classifies species into nineSpecies Recovery Categories, indicating the extent to which species are depleted or recovered compared to their historical population levels.
• Each Green Status assessment measures the impact of past conservation on a species, a species’ dependence on continuing support, how much a species stands to gain from conservation action within the next ten years, and the potential for it to recover over the next century.
• The development of the IUCN Green Status of Species Global Standard was led by the IUCN Species Conservation Task Force, in partnership with the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, IUCN Species Survival Commission, Re:wild, Wildlife Conservation Society, University of Oxford, Stony Brook University, Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Zoological Society of London.
• Green Status of Species provides a more comprehensive picture of a species’ conservation status, beyond the traditional red list categories of extinct, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, least concern, and data deficient.
• It also enables conservation practitioners to track progress towards conservation targets over time and identify areas where conservation efforts need to be intensified.

Green Status Define Recovery

• The Green Status assesses species against 3 essential facets of recovery:
  • A species is fully recovered if it is present in all parts of its range, even those that are no longer occupied but were occupied prior to major human impacts/disruption; AND
  • It is viable (i.e., not threatened with extinction) in all parts of the range; AND
  • It is performing its ecological functions in all parts of the range.
• These factors contribute towards a “Green Score” ranging from 0–100%, which shows how far a species is from its “fully recovered” state.