Continuing on in primate conservation. We've discussed the IUCN, and in this lecture, we're going to focus on how species are classified and listed as threatened taxa. So here we have the IUCN Criteria for Threatened Taxon. The IUCN calls their Red List, a barometer of life. What they do is they listed as a critical indicator of the health of the world's biodiversity. So here, we've got a nice visual from their page that says more than 31,000 species are threatened with extinction. That is 27 percent of all assessed species. So they've got a 41 percent of amphibians, 25 percent mammals, 35 percent conifers, 14 percent birds, 30 percent sharks and rays, 33 percent reef corals, and 27 percent selected crustaceans. As you look through their website, they have extremely ambitious goals of trying to make certain that they can really classify and list all of the threat levels for almost every single taxa on the planet. So a document available on their webpage is the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. So this is Version 3.1, Second edition of it. There is also a portion of the page that is the species information services. Where all the data that you go out into the field, you collect, you can plug that in for assessment. Now it is not just a simple like, "I go on to the woods, I look for some animals. Hey, I only see a couple of them, and that's what I report back." When you're actually looking at how it has gone through and how it's assessed. This is the flow chart for the Red List process. So we can start on the left hand side there. There's three separate categories for them. There's the Red List authorities. These are standalone groups or partner organizations. You can have this pre-assessment, assessment, and review phase before going to submission. You've got in the green, the global species programming partner programs. So another group or another set and category of groups of individuals who go and collect the data or assess the data, set up the reviews, put everything through the species information services webpage, do consistency checks, and then they go ahead and they submit that. Then you also have external assessors. So outside the IUCN networks, but again, individuals and scientists of these large, theirs hundreds of individual or a hundreds of organizations that are part of this group, and then there's also in the 14,000, 15,000 plus experts that within the group. So we're talking about not only a good data set but a robust set of collaborators to really go through and make certain that this information is accurate and correct before going ahead and going through the submission process. Then finally, that publication phase. So assessments added to the species information services database and appear in appropriate IUCN Red List and website updates. When someone says, "Oh, that's a critically endangered species or that's an endangered species or that is a threatened species," it isn't just a easy nomenclature, and they all have a definition of how and why they are called that. If we take a step back, we can say, why even have an international list? First and foremost, easily and widely understood system for classification. We want to be able to all speak the same language and have the same understanding and criteria. It provides an explicit objective framework to assess extinction risk. As we just looked at through that flowchart for the listing, it is one of those things that it is in check to double check and triple check to make certain that all the information is correct, so that we have a better understanding of what we're dealing with for extinction risk. Then finally, the Red List system was adopted in 1994. It's got a couple of years on it, but it's one of those, it still needs to continue to move forward. Continuing on with that, again, provide a system that can be applied consistently by different people. So it doesn't matter whether it is data that is collected in Vietnam, data that is collected in Australia, data that is collected in the United States, it all has this reasonable and similar consistent framework. It improves objectivity by providing users with clear guidance on how to evaluate different factors which affect the risk of extinction, and provide a system which will facilitate comparisons across wildly different taxa. Obviously, there's going to be different Saint comparisons between blue whales and butterflies. But this helps set up a constant framework for that. Then to give people using threatened species lists a better understanding of how individual species were classified. So we're going to go ahead and go through some of the definitions for the listing now. It is a longer list, but one that I think is important to understand all the distinctions when we get to this. So to begin with definitions, we can start off with population and population size. It's used in a specific sense that is different from common biological usage. It's defined as the total number of individuals of the taxon. Sub-populations. So defined as geographically or otherwise distinct groups in the population where there's little demographic or genetic exchange. So again, using examples from Vietnam, if we look at Delacour’s langur, which live on limestone blocks or if we look at silvered langur, which also live on limestone blocks. How much transfer between the population is there? If one animal lives on one side of reserve and there's no way to get over to the other side of the reserve, there's not going to be any genetic admixture. There's going to be no breeding between those two populations. So we can clearly start to talked about sub-populations of animals. Mature individuals. It's the number of mature individuals that are known, estimated, or inferred to be capable of reproducing. So definitely want to know what is the population dynamic and how many of those individuals can possibly reproduce and create more individuals, more offspring. Generation length is the average age of parents, the current cohort. So it reflects the turnover rate of breeding individuals in a population if it's an animal that breeds very, very slowly. So we can think about an elephant, then knowing those generational time frames, that's definitely going to affect how quickly these animals can reproduce. If we've got mice or fruit flies, obviously those generational turnovers are much more rapid. Reduction is a decline in the number of mature individuals or at least the amount or the percentage stated under the criterion over the time period specified. So you want to be checking to see whether the animals are in decline, whether the animals are rising. You need to know both how many mature individuals, what the reproductive output is, and how long those generational time frames are. Continuing decline again, are we seeing that we're not only having a reduction, but we're having a continual reduction year after year after year. Extreme fluctuations can be sent to occur in a number of taxon when population size or distribution area varies wildly, rapidly, and frequently, sometimes within one order of magnitude. So an extreme fluctuation can be a weather event, so a hurricane coming through an area and wiping out a forested area and killing a large number of those animals. That's definitely going to affect that population size. Severely fragmented. So individuals found in small or relatively isolated sub-populations, small sub-populations may go extinct, which will then reduce the probability of recolonization. So if you look at the animals, are they across the entire landscape? Are they within one particular area? Is there continuity between the groups? Are they all very, very fragmented, very isolated populations? Extent of occurrence is essentially the boundary of where the animals are. Do they have a very large range or do they have a very small range? Are they found in, we'll just use geopolitical boundaries. Are they found in one country? Are they found in multiple countries across our region? That can greatly affect how they're listed. Area of occupancy. So it's defined as the area within the extent of occurrence, but it really again, is just where did the animals actually occur? So what kind of scales are we talking about for these? Location. Geographic and ecologically distinct area which a single threatening event can rapidly affect all individuals of the taxon present. So as we talk about Tonkin snub-nosed monkey in later modules, they've been known to occur in a couple different areas. But for one of the populations, the Na Hang population. They built a dam in that area which flooded the forests were the animals lived. So that's a location that is most likely completely extirpated that has been cause to go extinct. Then a quantitative analysis. It's defined here as, any form of analysis which estimates the extinction probability of attacks on based on known life history, habitat requirements, threats, and any specific management options. Looking at population viability analysis is one way to look at it, but you have to really kind of understand. You can have all this data on what they're doing and how they're doing it. Where can we do in analysis to see how many generations these animals really kind of have left? Those are our basic definitions for listing. Now, let's go ahead and look at the Threat levels. First and foremost, what's going to happen is, you can look at the bottom left-hand corner, you've got all species coming in and it either is going to be a not evaluated species or an evaluated species. Then it really is kind of a progression through the ranks, so you've got not evaluated data deficient. Once we hit, now we're into our extinction risks from very little extinction risk, so at least concern all the way up to the top of that list, the black, the extinct. You can see Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered, which are threatened categories, Extinct in the Wild and then Extinct. One thing that's unfortunate and also very interesting is that, you'll hear about a new species being discovered and immediately, that new species is declared endangered or critically endangered. A lot of it has to do with, they found a small population of animals that only live in a very restricted area. It has a very small area of occupancy, a very small extent of occurrence. It is ever severely fragmented population, just the generation or the numbers of mature individuals in that population immediately, kind of push it through these threat levels. If we look at Data Deficient (DD), defined as, a taxon where there is inadequate information to make a direct or indirect assessment. We just don't know is usually how a number of the species will end up. Again, we're getting better and better information on almost all species of primates, but we still have a number of species that end up being Data Deficient (DD) overall. We can move into Least Concern (LC). A taxon is Least Concern (LC) when it's been evaluated against the Red List criteria and does not qualify, so it's been excluded for Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable or Near Threatened. We do have some, so think about our long-tailed macaques or rhesus macaques are generally known as Least Concern creatures. That doesn't mean that there isn't concern, it just means that they haven't met the criteria for these other threat categorizations. Near Threatened creature, it's been evaluated against criteria but doesn't qualify for Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable now, but it's close to qualifying for or likely to qualify for a Threatened category in the near future. So again, this constant reassessment, new data in getting a better sense of how the animals are doing and when things might need to change. Moving into Vulnerable (VU). Best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Vulnerable, therefore considered to be facing high risk of extinction in the wild. Then we get to the criteria A through E in a minute when we address one particular Threat level will look at critically endangered. But again, you can see how these built on each other. Endangered (EN), is when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A to E for Endangered, therefore considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. Then we get into our Critical Endangered (CR). Critically Endangered (CR), best available evidence indicates that meets any of the criteria A to E for Critically Endangered, therefore considered to be facing extremely high risk of extinction within the wild. I'm curious whether many people have heard this particular term before, but Extinct in the Wild (EW). It is when a species is known only to survive in cultivation, in captivity or as a naturalized population or populations well past the outside range. It's presumed Extinct in the Wild when exhaustive surveys and known or expected habitat at appropriate times, so diurnal during the day, season or annual throughout its historic range, have failed to record an individual. Survey should be over a timeframe appropriate to the taxon's life cycle and life form. Quite often when we think of animals Extinct in the Wild, we can think of a zoo population. The animals are not found whatsoever outside of those protected areas, or outside of its non historic range. They're not extinct yet, but they're extinct within their wild and natural populations. Then, the final kind of situation for it is Extinct (EX). So no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died. A taxon is presumed to extinct when exhaustive surveys in known and or expected habitat at appropriate times throughout its historic range have failed to record an individual. So it's not a one time you go out and you don't see it. It is you've gone through the full life cycle, you've gone through the full lifespan and not found them existing in any category whatsoever. You also don't have any of these populations that are outside of the wild, in cultivation. I want to go through very quickly and talk about Critically Endangered because it is one of the threat levels that we don't necessarily focus on, but this is where the rubber needs to meet the road. We need to be doing something about these species, or in all likelihood, they will be extinct from the world in the next 10 years. A taxon is Critically Endangered when the best available evidence indicates that it meets any of the criteria A through E for Critically Endangered, and it is therefore considered to be facing extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. So again, reduction in population size. So the way that they define this for Critically Endangered is an observed, estimated, inferred, or suspected population size reduction of greater than or equal to 90 percent over the last 10 years, or three generations. So going through direct observation, abundance approximations, decline of area habitat and occupancy, any of these things where we can see this big reduction in population size can be qualification enough for a Critically Endangered distinction. A Geographic Range is the extent of occurrence is estimated to be less than 100 square kilometers. So you can either have severely fragmented, or known from only a single location. You can have continuation to decline. You can have extreme fluctuations. So all of those definitions within there are really saying that this is a creature that is either reduced in size or has a very very narrow, restricted range. A population size that is estimated to be fewer than 250 mature individuals, or population size estimated some number fewer than 50 mature individuals. So we are talking about very very small populations, or in some instances, if you look at a population and see that it's all females or it's all males, that's clearly not a population that's going to be breeding. Then, this last one, qualitative analysis showing the probability of extinction in the wild is at least 50 percent within 10 years or three generations, whichever is the longer. So you've gone through, you've collected data, and you're running a population viability assessment, and it's showing that this is a population that is in serious danger or decline. That would be another criteria for Critically Endangered. As we talked about with the IUCN, they've gone through and you can actually look on the Red List and find animals that are Critically Endangered. So as we're doing primate conservation, here's some black crested gibbons, a species that is in dire need of conservation attention. But stepping outside of that, I wanted to also address some of the other things. You can find very very rare plants, so Critically Endangered plants. This is the [inaudible] I just thought it was a neat plant, something fun to bring up and talk about. There's also Siamese crocodiles. In Cat Tien National Park, where I work, there's been a serious relocation effort and rehabilitation of this species, so there's a place called Crocodile Lake on Bau Sau, where they brought in genetically-pure Siamese crocodiles, re-released them into their natural habitat and over the years, the crocodiles have been breeding and have been doing quite well within that population within that area. So a success story in there, but one particular instance of success for the population. That's our threat levels and threat distinctions. For our next lesson, we're going to go ahead and we're going to move onto Conservation Threats. So start really getting into the nitty-gritty of why we're seeing these great declines in these populations.
