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Improvements to the Red List Index Stuart H Improvements to the Red List Index Stuart H. M. Butchart1*, H. Resit Akc¸akaya2, Janice Chanson3, Jonathan E. M. Baillie4, Ben Collen4, Suhel Quader5,8, Will R. Turner6, Rajan Amin4, Simon N. Stuart3, Craig Hilton-Taylor7 1 BirdLife International, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2 Applied Biomathematics, Setauket, New York, United States of America, 3 Conservation International/Center for Applied Biodiversity Science-World Conservation Union (IUCN)/Species Survival Commission Biodiversity Assessment Unit, IUCN Species Programme, Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International, Washington, D. C., United States of America, 4 Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, United Kingdom, 5 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 6 Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International, Washington, D. C., United States of America, 7 World Conservation Union (IUCN) Species Programme, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 8 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Sandy, United Kingdom The Red List Index uses information from the IUCN Red List to track trends in the projected overall extinction risk of sets of species. It has been widely recognised as an important component of the suite of indicators needed to measure progress towards the international target of significantly reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. However, further application of the RLI (to non-avian taxa in particular) has revealed some shortcomings in the original formula and approach: It performs inappropriately when a value of zero is reached; RLI values are affected by the frequency of assessments; and newly evaluated species may introduce bias. Here we propose a revision to the formula, and recommend how it should be applied in order to overcome these shortcomings. Two additional advantages of the revisions are that assessment errors are not propagated through time, and the overall level extinction risk can be determined as well as trends in this over time. Citation: Butchart SHM, Akc¸akaya HR, Chanson J, Baillie JEM, Collen B, et al (2007) Improvements to the Red List Index. PLoS ONE 2(1): e140. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000140 INTRODUCTION also be available. As well as tracking global trends, the RLI can be In response to the accelerating rate of biodiversity loss, and the far- disaggregated to show trends for species in different biogeographic reaching impacts of this, the governments of 190 countries have realms, political units, ecosystems, habitats, taxonomic groups and pledged to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 for species relevant to different international agreements and [1]. This has led to increasing requirements for indicators that can treaties. chart the rate of biodiversity loss [2,3]. In response, the World The RLI has been widely recognised as an important Conservation Union (IUCN) and its partner organisations de- component of the suite of indicators needed to track progress veloped an indicator - the Red List Index (RLI; [4]) - based on the towards the 2010 target [3,8,14–17]. Consequently, an indicator IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM. on ‘trends in the status of threatened species’ has been moved into The IUCN Red List is widely recognised as the most the top group of indicators for ‘immediate testing’ by the authoritative and objective system currently available for classify- Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) Subsidiary Body on ing species in terms of their risk of global extinction [5–9]. It uses Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA; [16]). quantitative criteria based on population size, rate of decline, and In addition, RLIs based on the relevant sets of species are currently area of distribution to assign species to categories of relative being considered for adoption by the Ramsar Convention on extinction risk [10]. These criteria are clear and comprehensive, Wetlands, the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), the yet are sufficiently flexible to deal with uncertainty [11]. Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels under Assessments of individual species using these criteria must be the CMS, and for European threatened species through the supported by a wealth of documentation, including information on Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators-2010 initiative, range, occurrence, population, trends, habitat preferences, threats, which is coordinated by the European Environment Agency, the conservation actions in place and needed [8]. The Red List is also European Centre for Nature Conservation and UNEP-WCMC becoming increasingly comprehensive, with all species now (the World Conservation Monitoring Centre). assessed in several major classes (birds, mammals, amphibians, Given this increasing recognition and usage, it is important that conifers and cycads) and global assessments underway for all the RLI performs well as an indicator, for example, by meeting the reptiles, marine species in several groups (including sharks and criteria for successful indicators described by Gregory et al. [18]. coral-reef fish), several freshwater groups, and selected plant groups (initially, legumes and trees). The RLI uses information from the IUCN Red List to measure Academic Editor: David Lusseau, Dalhousie University, Canada the projected overall extinction risk of sets of species and to track Received September 20, 2006; Accepted November 27, 2006; Published January changes in this risk [4,12,13]. It is based on the proportion of 3, 2007 species in each category on the Red List, and changes in this proportion over time resulting from genuine improvement or Copyright: ß 2007 Butchart et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits deterioration in the status of individual species. The RLI was unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the initially designed and tested using data on all bird species from original author and source are credited. 1988–2004 [4], and has since been applied to amphibians [13], Funding: No funding was received. with a global mammal RLI in preparation. By 2010, RLI trends will also be available for all conifers and cycads, and for a more Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests representative set of taxa based on a random sample of all exist. vertebrates and selected plant groups. Baseline estimates for * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: stuart.butchart@ reptiles and selected freshwater fish, plant and marine groups will birdlife.org PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 January 2007 | Issue 1 | e140 Red List Index Improvements Further application of the RLI (and in particular, consideration of previous example, except that one species jumps from Near its application to non-avian taxa) has, however, revealed some Threatened to Vulnerable by year 2. In this case, the RLI value shortcomings in the original formula and approach. We describe shows a positive trend after year 2, despite the fact that the status these here and recommend revisions that address them to improve of all the species continues to worsen. the RLI formulation. This situation is not merely hypothetical. A preliminary RLI for the world’s amphibians for 1980–2004 showed a decline of ANALYSIS 104.6% (when weighting categories by relative extinction risk, i.e. Least Concern = 0, Near Threatened = 0.0005, Vulnerable = The original RLI formulation and its shortcomings 0.005, Endangered = 0.05, Critically Endangered = 0.5, Extinct The original RLI formula was defined as follows: and Extinct in the Wild = 1; see [4] for further details). This problem would be more likely to occur when calculating RLIs over ~ : { longer time periods, for groups deteriorating at a faster rate, and RLIti RLI(ti{1) (1 Pti ) ð1Þ for groups with fewer species (where the rapid deterioration of a small number of species can lead to the average threat score X becoming more than double that of the previous assessment). P ~ ½(W {W ):G =T ð2Þ ti c(ti ,s) c(ti{1,s) s ti{1 2. RLI values are affected by the frequency of assess- s ments Under the original formulation, the RLI value at a particular time point is dependent on the number of assessments X since the baseline year. In other words, the frequency of T ~ W :N ð3Þ ti c c(ti ) assessments influences RLI values. This is because the RLI value c is calculated in relation to the value for the previous assessment. where RLIti is the value of the RLI at time ti; P(ti) is the Figure 1C shows a hypothetical example for ten Near Threatened proportional genuine change in threat status at time ti; Wc is the species in year 1. In each subsequent year, one species moves weight for category c (weights increase with threat); c(ti,s)is into Vulnerable, and then continues to move up one category per the threat category of species s at time ti; Gs = 1 if change (from year. By year 4 there is one Critically Endangered species, one t(i21) to ti) in category of species s is genuine (otherwise Gs = 0); T(ti) Endangered, one Vulnerable and seven Near Threatened species. is total threat score at time ti, where ti is the year of the ith By comparison, the dotted line in Figure. 1c shows the situation if assessment (assessments are not necessarily made every year); assessments had been carried out in years 1 and 4 only. With the Nc (ti) is the number of species in threat category c at time ti; and same set of species having undergone the same status changes, RLIti21
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