LEC.242 Workshop 2 The IUCN red list A comparative analysis of factors threatening endangered
species
This workshop will make use of the searchable “Red List” database compiled by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This database has open access over the web at
http://www.redlist.org/
I encourage you to spend some time exploring this database, which has
global coverage and includes a broad range of taxa.
As described in Lecture 6, the IUCN categorises species based on the level of risk of extinction
(Fig. 1). In this workshop we will briefly look at the distribution of species across these categories
before looking in more depth at the ‘threatened’ and ‘near-threatened’ categories: Critically
Endangered (CR); Endangered (EN); Vulnerable (VU) and Near Threatened (NT).
How are listed species in the United Kingdom distributed across the 9
categories above?
As a first step we are going to look at the data entries for the UK (Great Britain and Northern
Ireland). While restricting your search to the UK, investigate the database to get species counts for
each of the nine categories listed above. In your report you should present these data in graphical
form (see OUTPUT 1 below). It would be useful, therefore, to record species counts for each
category on a spreadsheet (i.e. Excel).
1. Go to the website, click the ‘other search options’ button.
2. Click the ‘Location’ tab and select ‘United Kingdom’ (within the Europe list). Click the arrow
to make sure the UK is selected in your search criteria.
3. Click ‘search’, and record the total number of species returned.
4. At the left hand side of the page, click the ‘Assessment’ tab; the numbers of species in each
category is given in brackets after the category name.
OUTPUT 1: Present the data for the distribution of species across red list categories (ALL) in a
graph of your choice
5. Refine your search to CR, EN and VU (the ‘threatened’ categories) and look at the accounts
of some of the species listed on the UK’s red list.
What are the main factors affecting threatened species in the UK?
The search facility also allows us to use the types of threat to search the database. Twelve major
threat categories are included (each is sub-divided into more detailed categories). These can be
selected under the ‘Threats’ tab. With ‘UK’ selected under ‘location’ and the ‘threatened’ and
‘near-threatened’ categories selected under ‘Assessment’ (CR, EN, VU, LR/cd, NT or LR/nt), work out
how many threatened or near-threatened species are affected by the following factors (I’ve grouped
these to make the task a little easier):
1. Agriculture (category 2)
2. Other physical disturbance (category 1,3,4,6 &7)
3. Biological resource use (5)
4. Invasive species (8)
5. Pollution (9)
6. Climate change (11)
7. Others (10, 12)
(Beware, for 2 and 7 don’t just add the counts up from different threat categories to get your
species number as more than one threat may be listed for one species)
Record these data in an Excel spreadsheet.
How do threats to species in the UK campare with New Zealand and the world?
New Zealand and the UK are island nations of similar size (269,000 km2 & 245,000 km2 respectively),
similar complexity (two large and many small islands) and similar ethnicity (predominantly European
decent), but with very different human population sizes (4.3 million & 62.3 million respectively, as of
2010), histories of habitation, and geographical isolation. How do these two locations differ in their
distributions of threatened species?
Repeat the search for ‘threatened’ and ‘near-threatened’ species affected by the threats categorised
as above, but with New Zealand selected as the search location.
Record these data and think about how you might present them graphically to facilitate
comparison of the two countries (note: convert the species numbers to proportions or percentages
to allow comparison; don’t add categories to get your total species number, for the same reason as
above)
Next, restrict your search to terrestrial species (select under the ‘Systems’ tab). Search the database
again and record the data.
In addition, we would like to compare the NZ and UK results with the whole database (the global
picture). Deselect locations and run the search again to find out how many species in the whole
database are in each threat category.
OUTPUT 2 and 3: Present two graphs that allow comparison of UK, NZ and global data for the
proportion of species reported to be affected by various threat categories 1-7 (as above). The first
graph should include all species, the second should include only terrestrial species.
Some issues you might like to think about are: Are the UK and NZ representative of the global data?
How do UK and NZ compare? What reasons can you think of to explain the differences among these
datasets? Could the differences be due to reporting biases, or are they likely to reflect real
differences in the relative importance of the different extinction drivers among countries/regions?
When you have done this, you might like to investigate these differences further by looking at
animal and plant data separately, or you might like to look at the database entries for a country of
your choice. Make sure you also open some of the individual species accounts and look at the
information contained within.
Reporting
You should write a report of this workshop including a brief Introduction and Methods, followed by
Results (based on the graphs you produced above and any other tables/graphs that you think are
appropriate) and Discussion. Remember that the results section should include descriptive text. In
your discussion, I’d like you to pay particular attention to the differences between the UK, NZ and
global data in terms of the total numbers of species listed as threatened, the relative importance of
different threats to biodiversity, and how these threats differ across different systems (terrestrial vs.
freshwater/marine). You should also refer to examples, perhaps using the species accounts in the
database. Your report should be no more than 1300 words (excluding references) to be submitted
to the LEC submission box in the LEC3 Foyer by 11am on Monday 13th February. You must also
submit this work electronically via MOODLE.