Following a review process in 2008, IUCN Oceania successfully secured funds from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund to begin biodiversity assessments for three taxonomic groups –freshwater fishes, land snails and reptiles. With the assistance of SPREP, additional counterpart funding was also secured from the Fonds Pacifique.
The first step in completing these biodiversity assessments was to bring local, regional and international scientists together at a Red List Training workshop in Fiji. This workshop was largely made up of practical sessions where specialists used species data to learn how to carry out assessments based on the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria.
Over the course of 2011, the workshop attendees gathered data on population, distribution, ecology, habitat requirements, threats, and utilization for the focal species of this project. The IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria were applied in order to obtain a relative risk of extinction for each species being assessed. Experts came together at an evaluation workshop in September 2011 in order to review and finalize the species accounts, and create accompanying digital maps.
The resulting biodiversity assessments for 167 freshwater fishes, 166 species of land snail and 157 reptiles will be included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ (IUCN Red List). Summary reports for each of these groups are now available (see right column)
IUCN Oceania’s long term aim of improving information on the Red List is to empower people and governments to effectively utilize this data to guide conservation decision-making and planning, raise awareness of threatened species and promote the integration of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development in the region.
This project is the beginning of a process that aims to comprehensively assess species of the Pacific Islands, according to the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. This first stage has focused on Red List assessments for freshwater fishes, land snails, and reptiles in the Pacific Islands. Future work is planned on other taxonomic groups such as select invertebrates, plants and coral reef fishes in order to create a comprehensive dataset to guide conservation actions in the Pacific Islands.