New Global Standard: IUCN Green Status Kicks off to Help Species Flourish

A new conservation tool could assist in placing thousands of endangered animal and plant species on the path to recovery, allowing animals like the California condor and the Sumatran rhino to thrive once again.

IUCN Green Status of Species

Researchers have generally placed their focus on observing how close threatened species are to extinction, updating the extremity of the risk regularly on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which includes well-known wildlife like the mountain gorilla and uncommon flowering plants like Bayard's adder's-mouth orchid.

Presently, a new global standard referred to as IUCN green status of species will aid in providing a fuller picture of the conservation status of species by detailing how near it is to getting back to its normal population size and health.

Over 200 scientists that represent 171 institutions have been working towards the new measure for about 10 years. The initial assessments for 181 species have been released in the journal Conservation Biology. Species included are the grey wolf, pink pigeon, discovered in Mauritius, and the Kandelia obovata mangrove in east Asia.

Threatened Species

By carrying out an analysis on a species' historical population size, the success of past conservation efforts, present-day distribution, and viable abode, the new standard will let scientists plot a direction for the recovery of some of the one million species battling with extinction on Earth, with human activities playing a major role.

A University of Oxford researcher, Molly Grace, who headed the development of the IUCN's green status tool said: "The dragonfly has already reached full recovery. It wasn't doing very well in the past but, due to some EU regulations, the polluted water was cleaned up and the species was able to fully recover across its range and become ecologically functional again. "We do see good news stories."

Here are the green status species.

Pink Pigeon

Discovered only in Mauritius, this charismatic bird's wild population decreased in the early 1990s to around 10. It stayed threatened by invasive species, logging, and the climate crisis, and is listed as susceptible to extinction.

Burrowing Bettong

The small marsupial is discovered in a few regions of Australia and scientists has chosen this animal as an instance of a species at low risk of extinction but that isn't close to attaining a total ecological recovery. In spite of having a historically great range, the animal almost vanished because of the introduction of invasive species, existing in 1950 on just four islands.

Sumatran Rhino

The Sumatran rhino has been considered critically endangered since 1996 and they kept on reducing. Conservation efforts have not been successful so far but its recovery possibility, one of the deliberation for its green status classification, reveals that the tide could yet be turned.

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