Dr. Simon Stuart : 2. Rebirth of the Red List

2. Rebirth of the Red List

Applying for a Job in the IUCN

Based on his desire to protect threatened species, in 1983, before finishing his PhD program at Cambridge University, Simon joined the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP), which is now called Birdlife International, to help create the African Bird Red Data Book. The Red Data Book was an earlier form of the IUCN Red List.
As Ann was teaching as a biology teacher near Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Stuart applied for a vacancy at the IUCN and, in 1985, was fortunately selected from among many other applicants. He and Ann married in the following year. At the IUCN, Dr. Stuart worked in the Species Survival Commission (SSC), and as a result he started to be involved in the IUCN Red List.

IUCN Red List

As mentioned above, the Red List is a list of threatened species. There are various red lists made by many countries and regions. An example is the one made by the Japanese Ministry of Environment. These, however, are all based on the IUCN Red List. Living creatures on earth, from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, plants, to fungi are classified into eight categories according to their extinction risk level: (1) Extinct (EX); (2) Extinct in the Wild (EW); (3) Critically Endangered (CR); (4) Endangered (EN); (5) Vulnerable (VU); (6) Near Threatened (NT); (7) Least Concern (LC); and (8) Data Deficient (DD).
Every year, the number of species in the list increases. As of November 2020, approximately 130,000 species had been assessed, and more than 35,500 species had been listed as threatened species. The IUCN Red List is trusted around the world and is referred to when establishing conservation plans and policies to protect wildlife and ecosystems.

Developing a New Red List

In former times, the Red List was not as trusted as it is today. As mentioned above, the Red List categorizes living creatures by their extinction risk level, but the old Red List did not have clear selection criteria. Some people tried to retain or put a species in a more threatened category to raise funds for their conservation. Others pushed to have threatened species placed into less threatened categories to make it easier to trade them commercially. Such cases raised doubts about the objectivity of the Red List.
In 1987, the Steering Committee of the Species Survival Commission decided to reform the Red List through developing scientifically reliable criteria for categorization. Dr. Georgina Mace, a young researcher from the Zoological Society of London, was invited to lead the project, and Dr. Stuart was assigned to work with her as the IUCN staff member.

Dr. Stuart and Dr. Mace were committed to developing scientifically proven criteria and categories to rank species according to their extinction risk. This was extremely difficult work that required the participation of a wide variety of experts in botany and zoology as well as experts on marine species, freshwater species, fungi, insects, and so on.
Dr. Stuart struggled to recruit experts who were willing to help with this difficult project, but this was his chance to exhibit his ability. First, he selected and approached forward-looking experts who would gladly cooperate; gradually the number of cooperators increased. The more people that came on board, the greater the peer pressure was to participate in the project.

As a result, they were able to engage hundreds of experts in the process. In 1996, the new Red List based on the categories and quantitative criteria was finally published.

The 1996 IUCN Red List

The latest Red List has eight categories^* as introduced above: (1) Extinct (EX); (2) Extinct in the Wild (EW); (3) Critically Endangered (CR); (4) Endangered (EN); (5) Vulnerable (VU); (6) Near Threatened (NT); (7) Least Concern (LC); and (8) Data Deficient (DD). Among them, categories (3) Critically Endangered (CR), (4) Endangered (EN), and (5) Vulnerable (VU) are classified as threatened, with each category having quantitative criteria to evaluate the extinction risk of thousands of species. These criteria include, for example, criteria to assess the decline of population or restrictive and fragmented geographic ranges. In accordance with these criteria, each wild species is categorized as "Endangered (EN)," "Critically Endangered (CR)," and so on.

*The categories and criteria of the 1996 Red List were reviewed and slightly revised in 2001. In this story guide, we use the most recent categories from the 2001 version.

The Red List issued in 1996 registered a few thousand species based on standardized and quantitative criteria. In this way, it became possible to categorize all living creatures appropriately.

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