'Flawed' Red List Puts Species at Risk

March 12, 2009— -- It is probably the most influential barometer of extinction risk, yet the Red List is unscientific and frequently wrong. So claim a growing number of conservation scientists, including several who help compile it.

While no one wants to see an end to the Red List, which covers 45,000 species, many fear that the sometimes shaky methods behind the creation of the listings are downplayed, meaning time, money and effort can be misdirected trying to save "safe" species while others creep towards extinction.

The Red List - flagship of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) - not only raises awareness and millions in conservation dollars, it provides data for environmental impact studies, and is used as a lobbying tool for new policies and to encourage governments to stick to international agreements.

Its influence is continually expanding. Next year, the Convention on Biological Diversity will invoke the list to help gauge how close it is to its goal of reducing biodiversity loss.

Yet many are now questioning the list's quality. "The Red List wants to be a high standard, scientifically based, transparent system, but in reality it hasn't been," says Matthew Godfrey of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission in Beaufort, who serves on one of the specialist groups that compiles the list. Criticism recently came to a head in a series of articles in the journal Endangered Species Research.

Red List information is collated by around 7500 volunteers, usually linked with conservation organisations or universities, using anything from museum maps to records of the sale of animal by-products.

From this, extinction risks are calculated according to IUCN criteria, such as whether the rate of decline in species numbers has passed certain thresholds.

These criteria can throw up oddball results. The green turtle, for example, is listed as endangered despite a global population of over 2 million. "Green turtles are not going to disappear," says Brendan Godley of the University of Exeter, UK, and the Marine Turtle Specialist Group.

That doesn't mean we should ignore them - some populations are at serious risk from egg harvesting, for instance.

"It's just not the same level of risk as a population of 50 parrots living on a small island that is being deforested."