Red List Index (internationally traded species)

Figure. Red List Index (internationally traded species)

Internationally traded birds are increasingly threatened with extinction, owing to a combination of unsustainable use and other pressures, such as habitat loss driven by unsustainable agriculture, logging and commercial and residential development.

Coverage: Global time series 1980 onwards, varying by taxonomic group.

Scale: Aggregated from species level data which may be collected nationally, regionally and/or globally.

Time series available: 1980 –2016.

Next planned update: Updates are released annually.

Possible disaggregations: by region, country; This indicator is a disaggregation of the Red List Index..

Methodology: This version of the RLI shows trends in the status of internationally traded species only.

The RLI was initially designed and tested using data on all bird species (Butchart el al., 2004) and then extended to amphibians (Butchart et al., 2005). The methodology was revised and improved in 2007 (Butchart et al., 2007), with methods for aggregating across taxonomic groups and for calculating confidence intervals published in 2010 (Butchart et al., 2010). RLIs for additional groups have been added subsequently.

RLIs have been published showing the negative impacts of invasive species (McGeoch et al., 2010) and trade (Butchart 2008), and the positive impacts of conservation action (Hoffmann et al., 2010) and protected areas (Butchart et al., 2012). An RLI to show the impact of a single conservation institution was published by Young et al. (2014). The spatial distribution of the RLI was mapped by Rodrigues et al. (2014). An RLI for pollinators was published by Regan et al., (2015).

For poorly known, species-rich groups (e.g. insects, fungi, plants, etc), a sampled approach to Red Listing has been developed (Baillie et al., 2008). Once the sample of species in these groups are reassessed, RLIs for will be calculated.

Producing this indicator nationally: National Red List Indices (RLIs) can be calculated either by:

(1) Repeatedly assessing extinction risk at the national scale: examples of this approach have been published for an increasing number of countries and taxa.

(2) Disaggregating the global RLI: national RLIs are produced for all countries and updated each year for the UN SDGs.

These two approaches are described below.

More information about producing national RLIs can be found in Bubb et al. (2009), IUCN Red List Index – Guidance for National and Regional Use available here.

Use at the national level & examples of national use:

(1) RLIs based on repeatedly assessing extinction risk at the national scale.

National indices based on national assessments of extinction risk are available for an increasing number of taxa and countries. Many other countries have completed national red lists but not yet repeated these to produce an RLI. There are at least 515 national Red Lists for various taxonomic groups, covering at least 122 countries, of which Red Lists for 43 countries are available online at http://www.nationalredlist.org. Not all of these use the Guidelines for application of the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria at regional and national scales, so results may not be comparable between countries.

Such national RLIs may be more sensitive than globally downscaled RLIs. However, they come with the disadvantage that their trends may be driven by changes in status of species with a trivial proportion of their global population within a given country (Rodrigues et al., 2014). This is because national RLIs do not take into account the fact that different countries have different levels of global responsibility towards the conservation of the species they harbour.

For example, the return of the Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) to Denmark as a breeding species contributed to this country’s improving national RLI, but was inconsequential to the global RLI, because Denmark holds a tiny fraction of this widespread species’ population. In contrast, an improvement in the conservation status of Albert’s Lyrebird (Menura alberti) in Australia (from Vulnerable to Near Threatened) is globally significant, because this species is a national endemic. Thus, a country can have an improving national index while making a negative contribution to the global RLI, if improvements concern mainly species that are marginally represented within the country and deterioration in species for which the country is highly responsible (Rodrigues et al., 2014).

(2) RLIs based on disaggregating the global RLI.

To overcome the issue that national RLIs based on national red lists may be driven by changes in status of species with a trivial proportion of their global population within a given country, national RLIs (disaggregated from the global RLI for all birds, mammals, amphibians, cycads and corals) weighted by the proportion of each species’ global distribution within the country have been calculated for all countries worldwide, and this is one of the official adopted SDG indicators (UNSD 2016, 2017). The methods for this approach are described at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-15-05-01.pdf

The data for each country are available at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/?indicator=15.5.1(data).

The graphs for each country are available on the IBAT Country Profiles at https://www.ibat-alliance.org.

Availability of global data for national use: National RLIs available at https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/?indicator=15.5.1 (data) and on the IBAT country profiles.

Contact person for supporting national use: stuart.butchart@birdlife.org or Thomas.brooks@iucn.org

Subsets of the Red List Index can be used to track trends in the impacts of different drivers (utilisation, fisheries, pollution, invasive alien species etc), or for different subsets of species of particular policy relevance (e.g. species used for food or medicine, pollinating species, reef-building corals etc). In principle, national versions of these indicators can be produced following the same approaches above.

Websites

IUCN Red List Index