- IUCN: International Union for Conservation of Nature
- Type: International organization
- Primary Focus: Nature conservation, biodiversity
- Location: Gland, Switzerland
- Members: 1300
- Area served: Worldwide
- Key members: Grethel Aguilar (Director General a.i.) and Zhang Xinsheng (President)
- Revenue: CHF 114 million / US$ 116 million (2013)
- Employees: Over 900 (worldwide)
- Website: IUCN.org
The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) is an international organization that works on the sustainable use of natural resources and conservation.
The IUCN is involved in research, data gathering and analysis, advocacy, field projects, and education.
The mission of the IUCN is to ” encourage, influence, and assist societies around the world to promote nature conservation and ensure that any natural resources they use are both equitable and ecologically sustainable.
The IUCN was Founded on the 5th of October 1948 as the International Union for the Protection of Nature in Fontainebleau, France.
Over the last ten years, the IUCN has broadened its focus beyond ecology conservation and incorporated issues related to sustainable development in its projects.
While IUCN does not aim to mobilize the general public to support nature conservation.
It tries to influence the actions of businesses, governments, and other stakeholders by offering advice and information and building partnerships.
The IUCN is most famous for compiling and publishing the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
The red list reveals the conservation status of species worldwide after proper investigation.
The IUCN Red List
The IUCN Red List is the only recognized authoritative global ecological status diversity guide. A series of Regional Red Lists are provided by organizations or countries that evaluate the risk of extinction to all species within a political management unit.
At present, there are over 105,700 species featured on The IUCN Red List, with over 28,000 species likely to go on extinction, including 33% of reef-building corals, 34% of conifers, 40% of amphibians, 25% of mammals, and 14% of birds.
Species on the IUCN Red List are classified into nine groups: population size, rate of decline, area of geographic distribution, distribution fragmentation, and degree of population.
There is much emphasis on the acceptability of using any criteria in the lack of high-quality data, including suspicion and potential future threats, provided these suspicions can reasonably be supported.
The nine groups of the IUCN Red List;
- Extinct (EX) – beyond a reasonable doubt that the species no longer exists.
- Extinct in the wild (EW) – species in this category survive only in captivity, cultivation, or outside the native range, as discovered after exhaustive surveys.
- Critically endangered (CR) – in a particular and extremely critical state.
- Endangered (EN) – the very significant risk of extinction in the wild, meets any of the criteria A to E for Endangered.
- Vulnerable (VU) – meets one of the five red list criteria and is thus is considered at high risk of unnatural (human-caused) extinction without further human intervention.
- Near Threatened (NT) – close to being at high risk of extinction soon.
- Least concern (LC) – unlikely to become extinct shortly.
- Data Deficient (DD)
- Not evaluated (NE)
In the IUCN Red List, the animals classified as “threatened” are Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable.
