Endangered species: could better tracking methods reduce vulnerability or extinction?

Palau. Image by LuxTonnerre, licensed under Creative Commons.

Guest blogger botanist Craig Costion has written an article on endangered species on Biodiversity Revolution‘s blog which describes a new approach to developing the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) classification for potentially endangered species for which no demographic information is available.

The term ‘endangered species’ refers to species which fall under the IUCN’s Red List, a complete list of all endangered mammals, birds, amphibians, sharks, reef-building corals, cycads and conifers, but only a small percentage of all species of reptiles, fishes, and selected groups of plants and invertebrates have been classified.

Currently the IUCN classifies a species or habitat as ‘vulnerable’ if it has suffered a 30% decline ‘over 3 generations or within 100 years’. The author believes it is important to classify the remaining species to include ‘information on the history of habitat modification and destruction extending over and beyond 100 years’ to obtain a greater understanding of species vulnerability.

The full findings and methods are available in the post entitled Endangered Species by Craig Costion.

ACEBB Seminar 10 – Mike Wilkinson – Podcast Available

ACEBB seminar 10 – Prof. Mike Wilkinson –  is available as a podcast here

This week’s topic was “Meeting the challenges of landscape management in the 21st century.”

The seminar was presented by Professor Mike Wilkinson from the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University, Wales on Friday August 27 in the Royal Society Rooms.

Professor Wilkinson has been involved in a research project at Aberystwyth University to agree on a standard ‘plant DNA barcode’ to provide the foundation for the widespread use of DNA technologies to identify plants. Professor Wilkinson is a member of the 52 strong team of scientists from 10 countries who collaborated on the work.

Click here to view the ACEBB 2010 Seminar programme.