Definitions around species conservation

From Vladivostok, March 11th 2009

While I am working on upcoming posts with specifics on Vladivostok and Primorie region, let me share with you definitions, taken from Science Daily articles, of two key concepts that we will be using intensively in this blog. As we progress in our journey, we will go deeper into the recent IUCN Red List updates, and define concrete solutions we can put into place to limit the risks.

An endangered species is a population of an organism, which because it is either few in number or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters, leaving it at risk of becoming extinct.

Many countries have laws offering special protection to these species or their habitats: for example, forbidding hunting, restricting land development, or creating preserves. While species have evolved and become extinct on a regular basis for the last several hundred million years, the number of species becoming extinct since the Industrial Revolution has no precedent in biological history. If this rate of extinction continues, or accelerates as now seems to be the case, the number of species becoming extinct in the next decade could number in the millions. While most people readily relate to endangerment of large mammals or birdlife, some of the greatest ecological issues are the threats to stability of whole ecosystems if key species vanish at any level of the food chain.

You will find nice visuals and interesting articles related to this topic under the following link:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/gallery/plants_animals/endangered_animals/

The conservation status of a species is an indicator of the likelihood of that species continuing to survive either in the present day or the future.

Many factors are taken into account when assessing the conservation status of a species: not simply the number remaining, but the overall increase or decrease in the population over time, breeding success rates, known threats, and so on. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the best-known worldwide conservation status listing and ranking system. The system divides threatened species into three categories: Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), and Vulnerable (VU). Here is the link to this fantastic database: http://www.iucnredlist.org/