Europe

on the IUCN Red List

• Acknowledgements
• Publications
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European Red List

The European Red List is a review of the status of European species according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the European level (Pan-Europe and the European Union) so that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status.

Funded by the European Commission since 2006, the European Red List is compiled by IUCN’s Global Species Programme in collaboration with the Species Survival Commission and other partners and experts. To date 9,735 species have been assessed on the European Red List including all vertebrate species (mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fishes), freshwater molluscs, medicinal plants, dragonflies, butterflies, bees and a selection of terrestrial molluscs, saproxylic beetles and plants.
IUCN assessed the status of the aforementioned species using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria, which are the most widely accepted system for measuring extinction risk globally. All assessments followed the guidelines for Application of IUCN Red List Criteria at regional levels. Individual species assessments can be searched and consulted on this website through the search function above (Under the "European Initiative search").

The assessment of all grasshoppers and crickets is ongoing and will be completed by September 2016. Additionally, IUCN has recently been awarded a project funded by the European Commission’s LIFE financial instrument which will allow for the assessment of all bryophytes, ferns, and trees, a selection of shrubs, saproxylic beetles and all remaining terrestrial molluscs. This project is co-financed by other donors/organizations and supported by the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic and ArtDatabanken from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. These assessments are set to be completed by 2018.

Developing European Red Lists for these species groups will provide a comprehensive overview of their extinction risk and distributions in Europe, and will contribute to guiding policy decisions and conservation actions. These new assessments will supplement the existing European Red Lists and will provide a detailed picture of the status of biodiversity in Europe, thus, contributing to making the European Red List a Barometer of Life.

An overview factsheet of all the groups assessed by June 2015 can be found here. This factsheet includes an updated way of calculating the percentage of threat within a taxonomic group and makes the European Red List results comparable to the global Red List.