Climate & Environment
Threatened Species
Species facing elevated extinction risk — the IUCN Red List categories of critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable.
Definition
Threatened species are those assessed by the IUCN Red List as facing a high to extremely high risk of extinction in the wild, grouped in three categories: critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable. Assessment applies quantitative criteria — population size and decline rate, geographic range, and extinction probability models. The Red List now covers over 160,000 species, of which more than 44,000 are threatened, including around 41% of amphibians, a quarter of mammals and over a third of reef corals assessed.
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