Following discussions between FAO and UNEP-WCMC it was agreed that the groups for which data were most likely to be available and which would therefore be the focus for this work were: amphibia, reptiles, birds, mammals, ferns, palms and trees. Other groups initially considered comprised: vascular plants other than trees; mosses; lichens; fish and butterflies. These groups were excluded due to the anticipated paucity of data. Trees, the group based on habit rather than taxonomy, was included due to the recent completion by UNEP-WCMC of a project funded by the Government of the Netherlands, including development of a database of threatened trees of the world.
The project was principally designed to make use of data from the databases at UNEP-WCMC supporting existing published sources notably the 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (for ferns and palms) and the World List of Threatened Trees. The categories and criteria for establishing threatened status for species are fully documented in the source publications. This information is also available on the Internet at http://www.unep-wcmc.org.
Threat status for all species is provided according to the standards for threat status published by IUCN. Currently two standards have been produced: the original standard and the 1994 standard. The objective of both standards is the same - to provide an indication of global threat.
The original standard, used in the compilation of the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants (ie used for ferns and palms in this project) assesses global status on the basis of information provided at the national level. A species that is assessed as threatened in each of the countries in which it occurs is considered threatened at the global level, with the least threatened national category being assigned as the global status. The categories, in order of level of threat are: Rare (least threatened); Vulnerable; Endangered; Extinct.
The World List of Threatened Trees and the 1996 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals are based on the 1994 IUCN threat category standard. This method involves assessments being made of the world population of a species, and takes into account population size, extent and breeding structure amongst other things. The standard is designed to allow a more ojective assessment of conservation status. The 1994 standard allows for the categories Lower Risk, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered Extinct in the Wild, Exinct.
In all three publications, the source of the information onwhich the assessment is made, or details of the assessor, are provided.
Information was also to be obtained from other sources at UNEP-WCMC and expert networks. The objective was to collate information on:
Ideally, all cells in table 1 were to be completed for each country.
Table 1: Required categories for species information
Country: |
All species in country |
Forest occurring species | ||||||
Total species |
Of which endangered |
Endemic Species |
Of which endangered |
Total species |
Of which endangered |
Endemic species |
Of which endangered | |
Ferns |
||||||||
Palms |
||||||||
Trees |
||||||||
Amphibia |
||||||||
Reptiles |
||||||||
Birds |
||||||||
Mammals |
||||||||
Most of the research undertaken for this phase focused on identifying species that occur within forests. Issues that arose in this research are detailed in the results section.
Full details of the methodology (and results) of this approach were provided in the mid-term report from UNEP-WCMC to FAO, September 1999. A copy of this information is included with this report as Annex 1.
A summary of the information that was available for each species group for each category is given in table 2. Issues arising in gathering data for each of the following eight groups are summarised below. Samples of the data are illustrated in the tables and graphs illustrated in Figures 1-8 of Annex 1. The complete dataset, which may be queried by country or by taxonomic/habit group, is included in the Excel file that accompanies this report.
Data for the ferns and palms are relatively complete. The data on trees presented a particular problem due to the fact that this is not a taxonomic group and baseline country data for the total number of trees are not available. For animals, the focus was principally given to gathering data on forest occurrence of the species of main conservation concern: threatened single country endemics. Further efforts were made to assess the forest occurrence of non-threatened single country endemics.
In general, estimates of species richness by taxonomic group by country were available in the literature. To a large extent this information was already recorded in UNEP-WCMC's species databases. This was updated under this project.
Trees: An exception to this was for the category trees, for which data on country (and global) totals were not available. Trees are not a readily definable group and any data has to be gathered on a species-by-species basis. This category of information remains a problem to gather, in the absence of an authoritative world list of trees. Currently the only possibility is to calculate the figures from country floras, where these exist. This level of research was beyond the scope of this project and had not formed part of the work undertaken in production of the World List of Threatened Trees or development of the database of threatened trees at UNEP-WCMC.
Good data were only available for the relatively small groups: palms and ferns. This category presented similar problems to those described for trees under 4.2.1. Figures for forest occurring species by country were not available from the literature or captured in UNEP-WCMC's species databases and the task of identifying forest occurrence was too great to be undertaken for all species within the selected groups.
Some information on single country endemic animal species was available at the start of the project based on the database of endemic animals. Additional information was gathered on endemic species from country accounts where available. Palms again proved an exception with good data being available, due to the relatively few species involved and the extensive literature that is available.
This was a category with minimal information available but involving too many species to allow a species-by-species assessment to be made under this project.
Good data were available for all categories, based on UNEP-WCMC's threatened species databases.
Good data were available for the plant groups. Data were not available for any of the animal groups. As with previous categories, the task of identifying the forest occurrence of all threatened animal species on a species-by-species basis was too great to undertake for this project.
Data for this subset were the most straightforward to generate, as this essentially involved running the appropriate query on the database to select species which were both threatened and endemic to just one country. These are both fields of data that are maintained at UNEP-WCMC. Information on distribution to the country level is gathered as part of the process of assigning threat status hence identifying species in this category presented no additional problems.
This subset of category 7 involved identifying the forest status of all threatened single country endemics. Although this was still a considerable task, it was manageable within the scope of this project.
Table 2 Summary of Availability of information
All species in country | ||||
Group |
Total species |
Of which: endangered |
Endemic species |
Of which: endangered |
Ferns |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Limited data available |
Good data available |
Palms |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Trees |
Data unavailable |
Good data available for most countries |
Limited data available |
Good data available |
Amphibia |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Some data available |
Good data available |
Reptiles |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Some data available |
Good data available |
Birds |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Some data available |
Good data available |
Mammals |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Some data available |
Good data available |
Forest occurring species | ||||
Group |
Total species |
Of which: endangered |
Endemic species |
Of which: endangered |
Ferns |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Limited data available |
Good data available |
Palms |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Good data available |
Trees |
Data unavailable |
Good data available for most countries |
Limited data available |
Good data available |
Amphibia |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Good data available |
Reptiles |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Good data available |
Birds |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Good data available |
Mammals |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Data unavailable |
Good data available |
