• Slide number 0
    African lion (Pan­thera leo)
  • Slide number 1
    Chee­tah (Aci­nonyx juba­tus)
  • Slide number 2
    Clouded leop­ard (Neo­fe­lis neb­u­losa) | more info
  • Slide number 3
    Euro­pean wild­cat (Felis sil­vestris)
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    Jaguar (Pan­thera onca)
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    Jaguarundi (Her­pail­u­rus yagouaroundi)
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    Puma, Moun­tain lion, Cougar (Puma con­color)
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    Ocelot (Leop­ar­dus pardalis)
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    Pal­las’ cat, Manul (Oto­colobus manul)
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    Sand cat (Felis mar­garita)
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    Ser­val (Lep­tail­u­rus ser­val)
  • Slide number 11
    Snow leop­ard (Pan­thera uncia) | more info
  • Slide number 12
    South Chines tiger (Pan­thera tigris ssp. amoyen­sis)

201217Sep20:15

New IUCN’s Red List of Ecosys­tems, a fact of life!

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 17 Sep­tem­ber 2012 | mod­i­fied 17 Sep­tem­ber 2012
Archived

From Aus­tralia to Patag­o­nia, from coral reefs to rain­forests and deserts, the IUCN Red List of Ecosys­tems will assess the sta­tus of ecosys­tems world­wide, to iden­tify their risks and the poten­tial impact on both ecosys­tems and human well­be­ing. The motion to con­sol­i­date this new IUCN ini­tia­tive has been adopted dur­ing the recent IUCN World Con­ser­va­tion Con­gress, 615 September.

The press release on the brand new IUCN Red List of Ecosys­tems web­site reads: With a total of 661 votes in favor, 8 against and 26 abstained, the V World Con­ser­va­tion Con­gress, dur­ing ses­sions on Sep­tem­ber 12th 2012 in Jeju, Repub­lic of Korea, adopted motion 72 on the con­sol­i­da­tion of the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems.

Marine ecosystemMod­elled on the influ­en­tial IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, the Red List of Ecosys­tems will iden­tify if an ecosys­tem is vul­ner­a­ble, endan­gered, or crit­i­cally endan­gered, based on an agreed and inter­na­tion­ally accepted set of cri­te­ria for risk assess­ment. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing a global stan­dard for assess­ing the sta­tus of ecosys­tems, the out­puts of the Ecosys­tem Red List could also be used to inform on the cur­rent and future threats to the ser­vices that such ecosys­tems pro­vide, such as clean water, cli­mate reg­u­la­tion and nat­ural products.

“Nat­ural envi­ron­ments are under increas­ing pres­sure from unsus­tain­able use and other threats,” says Jon Paul Rodriguez, Leader of the IUCN Com­mis­sion on Ecosys­tem Management’s Ecosys­tems Red List The­matic Group. “Func­tional ecosys­tems are essen­tial to our liveli­hoods and well­be­ing. We will assess the sta­tus of marine, ter­res­trial, fresh­wa­ter and sub­ter­ranean ecosys­tems at local, regional and global lev­els. This, in turn, will help inform on the link between such sys­tems and the liveli­hoods of those who depend on them. The assess­ment can then form the basis for con­certed imple­men­ta­tion action, so that we can man­age them sus­tain­ably if their risk of col­lapse is low, or restore them if they are threat­ened and then mon­i­tor their recovery.”

We envi­sion that it could become a one-​stop shop for econ­o­mists, rural com­mu­ni­ties, local and national author­i­ties, who can use the assess­ments of the Red List of Ecosys­tems to bet­ter man­age the finite resources of our planet
Edmund Bar­row, Head of the IUCN Ecosys­tem Man­age­ment Programme »

The Red List of Ecosys­tems can help guide con­ser­va­tion action on the ground, includ­ing land use plan­ning and invest­ment pri­or­i­ties, by eval­u­at­ing the risks of ecosys­tem col­lapse and the sub­se­quent lost of ecosys­tem ser­vices. This can be a basis for land­scape and eco­nomic analy­sis, which then forms the basis for action, lead­ing, for exam­ple, to ecosys­tem restora­tion and improved governance.

Accord­ing to IUCN, the Red List of Ecosys­tems will also influ­ence the pol­icy process of inter­na­tional con­ven­tions, such as the Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity and guide invest­ments for sev­eral Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals, such as poverty reduc­tion and improve­ments in health — both depen­dent on healthy nat­ural envi­ron­ments that pro­vide impor­tant goods and ser­vices for human wellbeing.

The process for estab­lish­ing an IUCN Red List of Ecosys­tems was launched at IUCN’s World Con­ser­va­tion Con­gress in 2008 and since then the IUCN Com­mis­sion on Ecosys­tem Man­age­ment has focused on con­sol­i­dat­ing assess­ment cri­te­ria for cat­e­goris­ing ecosys­tems accord­ing to their risk of col­lapse and pilot­ing this in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, such as Venezuela and Sene­gal. Though the process for assess­ing the world’s ecosys­tems is ongo­ing, and regional assess­ments will be pub­lished as they become avail­able, com­plete global cov­er­age of all of Earth’s marine, ter­res­trial, fresh­wa­ter and sub­ter­ranean ecosys­tems is planned for 2025.

(Source: IUCN World Con­ser­va­tion Con­gress press release, 09.09.2012; IUCN Red List of Ecosys­tems press release, 12.09.2012)

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Goal: 7000 tigers in the wild

Tiger range countries map

Tiger map” (CC BY 2.5) by Sander­son et al., 2006.

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