The 25 authors share many concerns and offer a 19-point summary for improving conservation efforts. But they diverge widely in their prescriptions for how the IUCN red list’s role should change. Awan S, Diwan MN, Aamir A, et al. Suicide in healthcare workers: Determinants, challenges, and the impact of COVID-19. Front Psychiatry. 2022;12:792925. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.792925 Gonzalez, who is co-chair of GEO BON, a global network of thousands of researchers dedicated to improving how biodiversity is measured, agrees that the red list remains one of the few historical sources that will continue to provide “incredibly valuable” data covering the past five decades. But on its own it is not fit for the purposes it is now required to perform, he adds.

Molina N, Viola M, Rogers M, et al. Suicidal ideation in bereavement: a systematic review. Behav Sci. 2019;9(5):53. doi:10.3390/bs9050053. Frequently updated, bottom-up data is available from around the world, says Gonzalez – from individuals observing nature, camera traps, eDNA, satellites and drones. These can give us a picture of the status of biodiversity, as well as the ability to detect change as it happens and can better guide conservation action. The IUCN is currently exploring how the red list can begin to incorporate such data, says Rodriguez.

Sectors

Along with the limitations of listing itself, the authors say there is a problem with major organisations that favour funding for species in higher threatened categories. Anyone who has watched a David Attenborough documentary will probably have encountered red-list assessments, intended as a “barometer of life”, showing the status of global biodiversity. The red list sorts the species of the world into nine categories of extinction risk, from “extinct” through “endangered” to “least concern”. Fighting also took place at a second major hospital in northern Gaza, al-Quds, which has also stopped functioning. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the hospital was surrounded by heavy gunfire, and a convoy sent to evacuate patients and staff had been unable to reach it. For ocean experts the need for change is particularly evident, says Guillermo Ortuño-Crespo, co-chair of the IUCN high seas specialist group. The red list was primarily developed for terrestrial monitoring, later adapted for marine environments, and assessments systematically fail to reflect marine-specific threats, such as overfishing, meaning species such as yellowfin tuna are assessed as “least concern” despite Indian Ocean fisheries plunging to the brink of collapse, he says.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has never been intended for use a sole means to set conservation priorities, as anyone who has read the Red List Categories and Criteria document will know,” adds Rodriguez. While richer western countries direct funding via national conservation strategies and national “red lists”, the IUCN red list has become a de facto conservation priorities list in many developing countries, argue its critics. The dynamic between global north and south has been historically underappreciated, says Hughes, with most specialist groups still conducted in English or another UN language, leaving voices across Asia in particular among those likely to get lost. I never expected in my life that I would put 39 babies side by side on a bed, each with a different disease, and in this acute shortage of medical staff, of milk,” said Dr Tabasha. AYBL was founded in 2018 by brothers Reiss and Kristian Edgerton from the living room of their Bromsgrove home. Let’s say the IUCN red list disappears tomorrow. What instrument, what tool are we going to use to see if we’ve met our goals on threats to biodiversity?” says Ortuño-Crespo. “I think the best thing that we could do at this stage is have an honest, open conversation about what works really well on the IUCN red list and what works terribly. Just lay it all out. No judgment, no egos.”

Ask an Expert

Palacio says this was due to a flawed red list assessment – which did not assess population levels, nor explicitly consider key concerns, such as habitat fragmentation or the climate crisis. Instead of spending on the manakin, he was told the funds could go toward other species such as the Ruiz’s robber frog, a species that is already well-protected. Progress has, thankfully, happened fast from a time where the word of white scientists was often taken more seriously than that of scientists of colour, says Sundar. However, IUCN assessments continue to take lessons learned in Europe or America, and impose them worldwide “We are now seeing what can only be called a colonial notion of conservation,” he says. In his new position, Morgan will oversee company strategy and work closely with the Edgerton brothers, who will take the position of joint CEOs. Morgan will take the role of executive chairman at the group, with aims to grow the business into the biggest e-commerce group in the UK. Ruben Dario Palacio, a biologist and the paper’s lead author, found first-hand how the red list can divert attention and funding from where conservationists believe it is needed most. There are populations and species that will decline or disappear because we are putting uncritical faith in a single all-powerful list Ruben Dario Palacio, biologist

The Edgerton brothers and Lewis Morgan first met at school, where they developed a longstanding friendship.The brothers teamed up with fashion influencer, Alice Cross, in June 2020 to form Because of Alice.

A jaguar in the Sierra de Vallejo in Nayarit, Mexico. While jaguars are labelled as not threatened, scientists say that assessment ignores vulnerable subpopulations. Photograph: Alejandro Prieto/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year I have always enjoyed the non-London audience,” said West, which is certainly fortuitous for a man about to ply his trade in Bath. The Ustinov’s marketing department must be jigging with joy at all the free publicity their show has been receiving because of the furore in the footlights that West has provoked. Reiss Edgerton said: “I’ve known Lewis for over 20 years, so we’re in the fortunate position to already have the foundations of a relationship based on trust – something that was essential when considering teaming up with an investor. Numerous species groups have been comprehensively assessed, and as such we have been able to make key findings concerning the world’s biodiversity,” he says. “For example, the IUCN Red List shows that 41% of amphibians, 27% of mammals, 21% of reptiles and 13% of birds are threatened.”

Comments

I can’t wait to see what the future holds, as we continue to build the business as a major fast-growth player in the fashion, fitness and lifestyle arenas – we have huge aspirations and hope to one day become the biggest e-commerce group in the UK.” I don’t know when West last wandered along Shaftesbury Avenue and its environs in that magical light-filled half-hour before 7.30pm, when audiences start arriving at theatres for the evening performances. Created in 1964, the list has been hailed by many as a vital resource that has acted as a catalyst for species conservation. It has, however, also been criticised by some for its slow pace of assessment and data gaps. After nearly six decades, just 2% of the world’s species have been assessed, skewing toward well-known charismatic species such as big cats and apes, research has shown. Species listed as “data deficient” are twice as likely to be threatened but are less likely to get funding compared with species that have been assessed as threatened – with some arguing such species should be automatically classified as “ assumed threatened”. When the NGO he founded, Fundación Ecotonos, received funds from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), he was told the bird was not threatened enough for him to conduct a targeted assessment of the threats it faces. Nafilyan V, Morgan J, Mais D, et al. Risk of suicide after diagnosis of severe physical health conditions: a retrospective cohort study of 47 million people. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. 2023;25:100562. doi:10.1016/j.lanepe.2022.100562