The Data

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (also known as the IUCN Red List), is a rich compendium of information on threats, ecological requirements, and habitats of over 155,000* species; and on conservation actions that can be taken to reduce or prevent extinctions.

It is based on an objective system for assessing the risk of extinction of a species based on past, present, and projected threats. Species assessments are conducted following a standardised process using the rigorous IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, ensuring the highest standards of scientific documentation, information management, expert review, and justification. IUCN aims to re-evaluate species’ IUCN Red List categories every five to ten years to monitor change.

The IUCN Red List is updated routinely throughout the year with submission target dates viewable here.

IUCN Red List data can be downloaded from IBAT at the global or sub-global level (<1 million km²). This download contains species’ ranges, species’ point data and a full species taxonomy for the latest IUCN Red List.

World Database on Protected Areas

The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the most comprehensive global database of marine and terrestrial protected areas.

The WDPA is a joint project between the UN Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Data and information in the WDPA underpin the publication of the United Nations List of Protected Areas.

The compilation and management of the WDPA is carried out by the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), in collaboration with governments, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. The WDPA is sourced from almost 500 data providers in 245 countries and territories. These include governments, international secretariates, regional entities, NGOs and individuals.

Note, some data providers place restrictions on the use of the data provided to the WDPA. These can include prohibiting the use by commercial entities of the data provided. The WDPA information provided through the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool, or IBAT, is bound by these restrictions.

The WDPA is updated at the start of each month in IBAT and represents over 295,000* sites around the world.

Further information and metadata on Protected Areas can be seen in the WDPA Manual and IUCN Management Categories.

World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas

Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) are the most important places in the world for species and their habitats.

The KBA network includes ‘sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity’, in terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Sites qualify as global KBAs if they meet one or more of 11 criteria, clustered into five categories: threatened biodiversity; geographically restricted biodiversity; ecological integrity; biological processes; and irreplaceability.

One subset of KBAs includes the Alliance for Zero extinction sites, which hold the last-remaining populations of 1,483 of the Earth’s most threatened species. Protecting these sites is essential to preventing species extinction.

The World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas (WDKBA) is managed by BirdLife International on behalf of the KBA Partnership and is updated twice per year.

Further information on the process and methodology for identifying sites as KBAs can be found in the KBA Standard and associated guidelines, as well as their business user guidance.

The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration Metric

The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration Metric (STAR) uses data on the distribution, threats, and extinction risk of Threatened and Near-Threatened species.

The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration Metric (STAR) is a raster data layer and IBAT Report derived from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™.

For the first time, STAR allows organisations to quantify the potential contributions that species threat abatement and restoration activities offer towards reducing extinction risk across the world.

STAR shows how interventions deliver reductions in pressure that can result in changes to the Red List Index (RLI), which is used as the biodiversity indicator for the Sustainable Development Goals, the Aichi Targets and the United Nations System for Environmental-Economic Accounting.

STAR will be highly relevant for organisations contributing towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, as well as organisations setting science-based targets for nature.

IBAT has produced an Industry Briefing Note on STAR and for more information on the calculation and interpretation of STAR, please refer to IBAT’s Business User Guidance.

STAR Scores reflect:

• The number and Red List categories of Threatened and Near-Threatened species present at a site or administrative region, and the proportion of their ranges occupied by the site. The greater the proportion of species’ ranges occupied by the site, the greater influence a project can have over the populations that live there, and the more threatened they are, the larger the potential return.
• How much each kind of pressure affects those species. The greater the potential reduction in a pressure is, the greater the potential return
• The effectiveness with which particular pressures are reduced by interventions
• STAR Scores represent the opportunity to reduce the threat status for species of conservation concern to the category of ‘Least Concern’ - if all species were Least Concern, the STAR score for a given area would be 0

Rarity-weighted species richness

The rarity-weighted richness map is a raster layer showing the relative importance of each ~1km (30 arc-seconds) grid cell in terms of its aggregate contribution to the global distribution of species of mammals, birds, amphibians, crabs, crayfishes and shrimps. The rarity-weighted richness for each species within a grid cell was calculated as the contribution of the cell toward the global distribution of the species. These scores were summed across all species present within a grid cell to give an overall score.

High values show that a cell holds a large number of species and/or that the average ranges of the species present in the cell are small, so that the cell represents a relatively high proportion of their range.

Loss of species’ populations in such cells is therefore of disproportionate significance in terms of loss of global biodiversity (at least for the taxonomic groups considered). Rarityweighted richness is also known as ‘range-size rarity’ or ‘range-rarity’, and has been used as a metric of ‘biodiversity significance’.