Adding Nuance to the IUCN Red List

African Savannah Elephant, one of the many species benefitted by the IUCN red list.

When the IUCN red list categories were first introduced to the public in 1964, they were revolutionary in classifying the status of wildlife across the world. Far more than a list of species an their status, it's a powerful tool to inform and catalyze action for biodiversity conservation and policy change needed to protect the natural resources of planet earth. But in our ever changing world where biodiversity is facing every growing and multiplying threats, perhaps it's time we change the way we evaluate species as well. In short, we need a modernized and localized red list.

Flaw 1: A lack of localized assessment:

Whilst the IUCN Red List has drawn attention to the plight of thousands of species around the world, particularly our most iconic endangered species, and helped to reverse the decline of a few, it has a few major flaws. The first of which, is a lack of localized assessment.

Why does it matter? Because particularly when assessing species that have a huge range, perhaps over a whole or multiple continents, assessing the population as a whole hides the decline or disappearance of individual populations, only for the underlying causes to reveal themselves once it's already too late. This reactive approach to wildlife conservation only begins drawing attention to a species once it's already in a decline, a state that we should be looking to avoid in the first place.

Blue Wildebeest populations across Africa are decreasing, but the rates of decline and overall population sizes vary from country to country. Hence, each countries herd should be evaluated differently.

And it's important to understand why the IUCN Red List is structured in such a way in the first place. When created in 1964, the list was designed to do just that, to draw attention to the plight of species that were already endangered, or declining dramatically. It was the first time in history that governments and conservationists from around the world, and all were tasked with reversing the decline of already endangered species, not trying to predict the decline of species that would become threatened with extinction in the future.

But in our modern world of rapid biodiversity loss, where mounting pressure of habitat loss, pollution, climate change and over-exploitation are pushing species to the brink, it's a lot easier to protect species whilst their still common, and protect habitats whilst they're still intact, than trying to catch them once their already falling. And likely, the proactive approach will be a lot cheaper in the long run, which is important to consider when most of the money paying for species restoration either comes directly from nature based economies where every dollar counts, or directly out of the general taxpayers pockets.

Our solution? Whilst it would be ideal to asses individual populations of each species on a local basis (per region of a country, or even per reserve), this is likely unattainable, especially in the global south where governments have little cash to spare on wildlife conservation. But what is achievable, is assessing species based off their status in each country, taking into consideration the overall trend of decline, as well as their historical range and populations. Such an approach would allow us to not only detect the decline of species before they start to snowball, but also to evaluate the factors behind why they are declining in the first place. Using terms like.........

• Nationally critical

• Nationally endangered

• Nationally vulnerable

• Nationally threatened

• Nationally abundant

to asses a species within a nation based on population trends is much more constructive. Not only for conservationists, but also for the general public, who often fail to understand the nuances of species vulnerability under the general status of "endangered" or "threatened".

Flaw 2: Overreliance on a Species being Endangered to Receive Funding:

The second flaw is that the funding that each species receives is too closely tied to it's status designation, with only the most threatened and endangered receiving the funding and protections needed to facilitate species recovery. Whilst this isn't the direct fault of the IUCN as per say, it's an unfortunate side effect that's detrimental to species conservation overall.

To understand the cause behind this dilemma, we must again revisit the original purpose of the IUCN Red List some 60 years ago. The aim of the whole project was to evaluate the status of species and figure out ways to get species off the endangered and threatened species lists for good. Hence, It made sense that those that are declining the most or the most depleted, would receive the most funding to aid in their recovery. But what this has evolved into is a battle where to continue the same attention and funding that has supported historic recovery, the species must continue to be classified as Endangered or Critically Endangered, even if certain populations are thriving or overabundant. In this way, the endangered species list becomes more of a funding mechanism, rather than a legitimate way of reversing biodiversity loss.

Angolan Giraffe in Namibia. Over the past 30 years, giraffe populations have thrived in Namibia and South Africa due to highly effective economic incentives.

Under this current model, you also have misguided environmental groups using Red List as a "shield" against consumptive use, either by changing the IUCN status itself, or using it to influence national status designations such as the ESA of the US. A perfect example of this is the recent controversies around Giraffe Hunting in Africa by US and European based environmental groups. Though giraffes as a whole are decreasing across the content at an alarming rate, decreasing by 40% in 30 years, and most of that decrease is focused around populations within Eastern and Western Africa. Meanwhile, the southern most subspecies have experienced considerable increases in their populations due to effective conservation efforts. Hence, the legal harvest of giraffes is utilised in these areas, both as a funding mechanism, and to control populations exceeding the habitat available to them. Despite this, groups such as the Humane Society of US have used their overall designation as Vulnerable as reason to object to this utilization, and have petitioned to change their status to Endangered under the ESA. This is despite the giraffe being harvested out of a population that was thriving, and it being part of a subspecies that had greatly increased in number over the past 30 years, partially due to it's reintroduction into hunting areas. In essence, situations like this shows that lack of nuance provided by Red List designations allows special interest groups to twist the truth, often to the long term detriment of the species they're trying to protect.

The solution to this problem links back to our first point, where rather than evaluating species over their entire range, evaluating them on a national level first, and then on a local and property level where possible, allows for a separation of policy between thriving and diminished populations, and means that funding isn't dependent on an overall designation. We can direct the majority of funding towards struggling populations to aid in recovery, whilst providing some funding to thriving populations, and even encouraging sustainable utilization through hunting and ecotourism as a source of revenue.

Examples in Southern Africa: African Bush Elephant

The most glaring example of this in Southern Africa is the plight of African Savannah Elephant. A species that once numbered over 20 million over the majority of the African continent (besides the driest of deserts), now numbers just over 415,000 animals (for Bush & Forest Elephants Combined) across a tiny percentage of their historic range. Based of this rapid decline in the past 400 years, the species current designation as "endangered" under the IUCN red list, with further indication of a continued decline over most of it's range.

But when you look at the plight of this species over it's entire range, it tells two very different stores. In most of Eastern, Western & Central Africa, populations of elephants are not just declining, but plummeting. Astronomically high human population growth is pushing rapid rates of habitat loss & encroachment, poaching, poisoning, and human-wildlife conflict, that are pushing elephant populations to the brink. But in Southern African nations like South Africa, Namibia and Botswana, whilst savannah elephants certainly haven't recovered to their historical highs, the trend seems to be increasing in most areas. And if there is a decline, it tends to be localized, and slower than the overall rate of decline across the continent.

Under a country specific assessment program, many of the populations in western and Central Africa would be reclassified to "nationally critical", most of Eastern and Southern African populations would be reclassified to between "Nationally Endangered" to "Nationally Threatened" and in Botswana, the country possessing between 30-50% of the worlds remaining elephants, would be classified as "Nationally abundant". For a full analysis of our own proposed species status designations, head to the African Bush Elephant profile page, where a full list of it's status in it's remaining range is shown.

How Faunus aims to address this:

Part of the long term goal of Faunus is to establish our own refined version of the IUCN red list, that evaluates the status, population trends, and utilization of wildlife from the property level first, and then on a landscape and country level after. The goal of this is to have a deep understanding of the total populations present in a area, the population trends over time, and the reasons why populations are following those trends. We can then use these factors to determine the best ways to either restore populations to a point where they are no longer threatened, or to prevent imminent declines of currently abundant species.

To do this as accurately as possible, we're in the process of creating our own species designation list, where we evaluate species on the national level, as well as on the local level where possible. We use factors such as overall populations, increase/decrease trends, and changes in abundance and density over time, and compare these to historical estimates to create national designations. For the most part, we simply need far more data to effectively do this, but we've begun the process on African Bush Elephants in Southern Africa, a species where there has been significant data gathered by researchers across the continent, but particularly within Southern Africa.

We're also attempting to quantify a the value of wildlife, both from an economic and ecological perspective, and figure out ways to financially motivate communities to preserve and expand the populations of species that most need it, something that the IUCN has never attempted. Whilst current and past populations of iconic fauna such as Elephants, Lions, and Rhinos are important to understand, understanding their value and relationship with both the local and international community allows us to create financial incentives that encourages long term ecosystem preservation. And in our modern era of rapid biodiversity loss, every advantage that wildlife can have, is one worth investing in.

I encourage you to comment down below, to hear your opinions on whether or not these changes would be beneficial or not. Faunus continues to aim to reinvent the way conservationists measure the status of threatened species, so that we can detect population decreases earlier, and determine the root causes of biodiversity decline before it is too late.

4/08/2024