The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ is widely recognized as the most comprehensive, objective global approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species. www.iucnredlist.org
To provide information and analyses on the status, trends and threats to species in order to inform and catalyse action for biodiversity conservation.
This goal includes the "traditional" role of the IUCN Red List in identifying particular species at risk of extinction. While the role of the IUCN Red List in underpinning priority-setting processes for single species remains of critical importance, the goal has been expanded to encompass the use of data from the Red List for multi-species analyses in order to identify and monitor trends in species status and to catalyse appropriate conservation action.
Iran is a major diversity hotspot in the wider European region. It is mostly inhabited by characteristically European species, but also has a few south and Central Asian ichthyofaunal elements. While all IUCN Red List drafts for the species of the Eastern Mediterranean have been reviewed this spring in Jordan (see June 2013 FFSG Newsletter), it was not possible to review the Iranian taxa due to entry visa problems.
The Azraq Red List team in front of a pond full of alien fishes.
"The biggest collaborative study in biodiversity sciences ever" has resulted in our multi-author paper about the role of conservation published in Science 2011: "The impact of Conservation on the Status of the World's Vertebrates"
IUCN and the European Commission have been working together on an initiative to assess around 6,000 European species according to IUCN regional Red Listing Guidelines. Freshwater mollusks and fishes turned out to be the most threatened taxagroups in Europe.
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