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Wildlife Trust Announces Red List Assessment for Ecosystems

Friday, October 24, 2008
Posted in Environment | Tagged Environment

NEW YORK, N.Y., - Wildlife Trust, the international conservation organization that empowers local conservation scientists worldwide to protect nature and safeguard ecosystems and human health, announced the IUCN’s acceptance of a Wildlife Trust Alliance motion to create the first-ever criteria for a Red List of threatened ecosystems.

The resolution adopted at the IV World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, marks a strong victory for the leadership of Wildlife Trust Alliance scientists and their allies around the world. Establishing global standards for biodiversity is no longer just species-specific. The proposal, promoted by Provita (Venezuela), Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Brasil), Wildlife Trust (USA), Zoological Society of London (UK), VITALIS (Venezuela), and the Department of Environment and Climate Change New South Wales (Australia), recognizes the need for a standardized process for assessing threat status and risk at the ecosystem level. “Creating a Red List for endangered ecosystems goes hand-in-hand with the need to protect at-risk species that live in such areas as the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, South Africa’s grasslands, and Indonesian lowland tropical forest,” said Dr. Mary C. Pearl, President of Wildlife Trust.

The resolution presents a pragmatic way to look at and classify threatened ecosystems at the regional, national and global level. “A key element of this proposal is that it calls for a clear separation of risk assessment - a fundamentally scientific process - from the definition of conservation priorities, a societal undertaking which must take into account factors such as ecological distinctiveness, costs, logistical practicalities, likelihood of success and public preferences,” said Dr. Jon Paul Rodríguez, Founder and Board Member of Provita. “The motion to move forward on this critical piece of conservation science creates a win-win situation for both wildlife and people. Helping society better understand levels of risks to the ecosystems we depend on opens the door to creating sustainable solutions we can all adopt,” said Dr. Andrew Taber, Executive Vice President of Programs for Wildlife Trust.

The resolution, in the most practical terms, would allow the application of standardized and accepted criteria to categorize terrestrial ecosystems in the very same way that is accomplished through the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report states, “In the past 50 years scientists note that humans have gravely changed ecosystems more rapidly and most extensively than any comparable time in human history…the resulting and largely irreversible loss of biological diversity has been… substantial.” Noted Dr. Suzana Padua, President of Instituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas: “Identifying the most pressing cases for action, and monitoring improvement of ecosystem status due to the concerted action of governments, non-governmental organizations, academia and the private sector, are just two of the potential applications of our joint proposal.”

“Everyone deserves to live in a viable ecosystem. The challenge facing us every day as conservation scientists is to look at issues holistically and develop solutions that make sense and are accepted by local communities. This is how Wildlife Trust Alliance scientists work in their own countries around the world,” noted Dr. Mary C. Pearl.

About Wildlife Trust
Wildlife Trust empowers local conservation scientists worldwide to protect nature and safeguard ecosystem and human health. Wildlife Trust is a conservation science innovator and leverages research expertise through strategic global alliances. Wildlife Trust pioneered the field of Conservation Medicine, a new discipline that addresses the link between ecological disruption of habitats and the effects on wildlife, livestock and human health.