sRedList

Accelerating IUCN Red List assessments for rapid and effective biodiversity monitoring

The International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (hereafter “Red List”) plays a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. However, years of insufficient resourcing has challenged Red List assessors’ ability to expand the number of species included in the Red List, while updating old assessments and making assessments more robust and coherent among groups. To address these challenges, modelling methods have been developed by researchers for two decades with the goal to support, fast-track, and standardise Red List assessments, but their uptake in the Red List has been very limited. The sRedList working group brings together Red List practitioners and ecological modellers to address these challenges; it is coordinated by Luca Santini and Moreno Di Marco and was granted with a postdoc position, occupied by Victor Cazalis. The working group has been very dynamic, with strong commitment from both modeller and practitioner sides, which ensured strong applicability to our research projects. Moreover, the fact that a postdoc position was funded enabled to make much more rapid progresses and to facilitate the communication within the working group and with external partners! We are all very enthusiastic about this inspiring working group and we feel very lucky for this opportunity to gather such a large and diverse group of people, along with the opportunity to hire a postdoc to push projects forward.

The first objective of our working group was to synthesise the published modelling approaches to predict Red List categories. This led to a review where we described and compared the goals and approaches of 98 studies (Cazalis et al. 2022, TREE). Thanks to extensive discussions between academics and Red List stakeholders that are part of the working group, we were able to explore in the paper the reasons why these studies had very little uptake in the Red List and to detail the communication gap between academics and the Red List community. We further suggested how this could be bridged as well as several research avenues to effectively support Red List assessments.

The second objective was to fill scientific gaps that we identified in our review, through four analytical projects that are currently ongoing. Etienne Henry, a Master student hosted by iDiv for six months is developing a comparative extinction risk modelling approach that provides more useful outputs to Red List assessors. Giordano Mancini, a PhD student in Sapienza University in Rome (supervised by Moreno and Luca), develops a standard measure of species exposure to climate change in order to inform Red List criteria on future population trends. He is currently visiting iDiv for six months to collaborate with Victor. The third project, led by Victor, consists in estimating the likelihood of species currently listed as Data Deficient to have sufficient data for Red List assessments. Such algorithm aims to prioritize reassessment of species most likely of being listed in a data sufficient category.

The third objective is the most important one in terms of expected practical outcomes, aiming to effectively bridge the gap between academics and the Red List community. In our initial synthesis paper, we showed that a main limitation of academics’ attempts to support Red List assessments was that the methods developed were not accessible to assessors. To address this, the working group decided to develop an online platform where Red List assessors could easily apply relevant analyses. This includes some functionalities to fast-track some assessment steps (e.g., automated creation of species range map) and others that provide assessors with key data to inform their reassessments (e.g., calculating trends in species’ Area of Habitat). The overall philosophy of the platform is to provide easy-access to complex analyses, but offering many interactive options to assessors to best meet their specific needs (e.g., selecting habitat preferences before mapping the Area of Habitat of a species). All outputs of the platform (e.g., maps, parameters, species information) are provided in a format that can be directly submitted in a Red List assessment.

The sRedList platform is currently being developed by joint efforts of the working group, and our partner LifeWatch Italy that helps us developing the web infrastructure and is hosting the platform on their server. We expect the first version to be released in March 2023 and that it will ease the voluntary work of Red List assessors across taxonomic groups (from Fungi and invertebrates to mammals). After the first release we will keep adding functionalities to the platform and adapt it based on users’ feedback to ensure maximum uptake. sDiv is planning to keep supporting this new phase of the sRedList platform life, which will focus on technical development rather than academic research, by granting a third year to the working group and contracting Victor as an external developer to manage and further develop the platform (to be confirmed). Additionally, we are now trying to secure further funding to ensure the platform will be viable on a longer term and as an adaptable tool for the Red List community.

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