International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an amazing organisation that focuses on conservation, sustainability. IUCN Red List is a comprehensive record of conservation status of plants, animals. Indicates whether a species is already extinct, how likely will an existing group go extinct in the near future.
IUCN Red List classifies species into 9 categories based on factors like population size, rate of population decline/growth, breeding success, geographic distribution, known threats, actions being taken to protect species.
9 categories of conservation status:
- Least Concern (LC) – widespread, abundant. Lowest risk of being endangered
- Near Threatened (NT) – most likely to be endangered
- Vulnerable (VU) – high risk of being endangered
- Endangered (EN) – high risk of being extinct
- Critically Endangered (CR) – very high risk of being extinct
- Extinct in the Wild (EW) – surviving individuals are found only in captivity
- Extinct (EX) – no known surviving individuals
- Data Deficient (DD) – risk of extinction not assessed due to insufficient data
- Not Evaluated (NE) – hasn’t been evaluated yet against the criteria
What kind of a world do we want?