Dataset Information

Tracking extinction risk trends and patterns in a mega-diverse country: A Red List Index for birds in Colombia.

ABSTRACT: Monitoring trends in the extinction risk of species is important for tracking conservation effectiveness. The Red List index (RLI) reflects changes in aggregate extinction risk for sets of species over time (a value of zero means that all species are extinct, a value of one means that all species are categorized as Least Concern). We calculated the first national RLI for birds in Colombia for the period 2002-2016, and disaggregated indices by ecosystems, regions, and species groups. Overall, the status of birds in Colombia has moderately deteriorated during 2002-2016, declining by 0.0000714% per year (the global RLI for birds declined by 0.0297% per year). High Andean forest, paramo, and freshwater are the ecosystems in worst condition. The two regions with the greatest avian diversity contrasted: the Andes has the lowest RLI, and the Amazon the highest. Among species groups, gamebirds, parrots, large frugivores, and forest raptors are the most threatened. Habitat loss from expansion of illicit crops and population declines from hunting were the most important threats. Agricultural expansion, invasive alien animal species, illegal logging and illegal mining are significant threats for some species. Tracking species' extinction risk is important in a country with the highest bird species richness in the world, dynamic spatial patterns of habitat loss, and high levels of endemism. Recent developments provide reasons for both hope and despair. In 2016, a peace agreement ended 50 years of armed conflict. New opportunities for biodiversity conservation, local development based on bird-watching tourism, and advancement in scientific knowledge of birds now occur alongside dramatic increases in deforestation. These new conservation opportunities and challenges provide strong motivation to take advantage of the fact that the overall risk of extinction of birds in Colombia is still relatively low and stable. Effective action is urgently needed while there still is the opportunity to prevent extinctions and safeguard species, particularly those in higher risk categories.

SUBMITTER: Renjifo LM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6984723 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Tracking extinction risk trends and patterns in a mega-diverse country: A Red List Index for birds in Colombia.

Renjifo Luis Miguel LM Amaya-Villarreal Angela María AM Butchart Stuart H M SHM

PloS one 20200127 1

Monitoring trends in the extinction risk of species is important for tracking conservation effectiveness. The Red List index (RLI) reflects changes in aggregate extinction risk for sets of species over time (a value of zero means that all species are extinct, a value of one means that all species are categorized as Least Concern). We calculated the first national RLI for birds in Colombia for the period 2002-2016, and disaggregated indices by ecosystems, regions, and species groups. Overall, the ...[more]

PMID: 31986160

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Project description:BackgroundThe IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM (hereafter the Red List) is an important global resource for conservation that supports conservation planning, safeguarding critical habitat and monitoring biodiversity change (Rodrigues et al. 2006). However, a major shortcoming of the Red List is that most of the world's described species have not yet been assessed and published on the Red List (Bachman et al. 2019Eisenhauer et al. 2019). Conservation efforts can be better supported if the Red List is expanded to achieve greater coverage of mega-diverse groups of organisms such as plants, fungi and invertebrates. There is, therefore, an urgent need to speed up the Red List assessment and documentation workflow.One reason for this lack of species coverage is that a manual and relatively time-consuming procedure is usually employed to assess and document species. A recent update of Red List documentation standards (IUCN 2013) reduced the data requirements for publishing non-threatened or 'Least Concern' species on the Red List. The majority of the required fields for Least Concern plant species can be found in existing open-access data sources or can be easily calculated. There is an opportunity to consolidate these data and analyses into a simple application to fast-track the publication of Least Concern assessments for plants. There could be as many as 250,000 species of plants (60%) likely to be categorised as Least Concern (Bachman et al. 2019), for which automatically generated assessments could considerably reduce the outlay of time and valuable resources for Red Listing, allowing attention and resources to be dedicated to the assessment of those species most likely to be threatened.New informationWe present a web application, Rapid Least Concern, that addresses the challenge of accelerating the generation and documentation of Least Concern Red List assessments. Rapid Least Concern utilises open-source datasets, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Plants of the World Online (POWO) through a simple web interface. Initially, the application is intended for use on plants, but it could be extended to other groups, depending on the availability of equivalent datasets for these groups.Rapid Least Concern users can assess a single species or upload a list of species that are assessed in a batch operation. The batch operation can either utilise georeferenced occurrence data from GBIF or occurrence data provided by the user. The output includes a series of CSV files and a point map file that meet the minimum data requirements for a Least Concern Red List assessment (IUCN 2013). The CSV files are compliant with the IUCN Red List SIS Connect system that transfers the data files to the IUCN database and, pending quality control checks and review, publication on the Red List.We outline the knowledge gap this application aims to fill and describe how the application works. We demonstrate a use-case for Rapid Least Concern as part of an ongoing initiative to complete a global Red List assessment of all native species for the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Bermuda.

Dataset Information

Tracking extinction risk trends and patterns in a mega-diverse country: A Red List Index for birds in Colombia.

Publications

Tracking extinction risk trends and patterns in a mega-diverse country: A Red List Index for birds in Colombia.

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