How It's Used

"Did anyone notice the recent crisis in poetry publishing? If poetry were a species, it would have entered the red list. There were more writers of the stuff than ever, but few readers. Poets were loss makers, so bigger publishers dropped their poetry lists or shrank them to a trickle of slim, overpriced volumes. Prominent poets, once published by the big houses, were forced to seek out new habitats within the small presses. This narrowed what those companies could do: it meant scant room for poets considered uncommercial. So those proud starvelings were left, beaks open, in the cold of non-publication."

—David Morley, "Review : Poetry: An end and a beginning: Small presses are breathing new life into the industry. MR Peacocke is benefiting," The Guardian (UK), January 24, 2004.

"Because it traverses both the monsoon region and the Siberian region of the temperate climatic belt, the Amur is richer in its diversity of species than any other river in Russia, with a range of species that occur nowhere else on earth and a dazzling array of relic species from the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs.

“'There, a yellowcheek,' a barracuda-like fish that can grow to roughly 50 kilograms, Misha said. 'This is red book,' a reference to Russia's 'red list' of endangered species. He lifted it out of the pile, to take a closer look. 'Definitely red book. Very rare fish...'"

—Terry Glavin, "Russia, a land of giant-killers; For his new book on the ‘age of extinctions,' Canadian writer Terry Glavin goes in search of the Amur River's fabled prehistoric salmon and sturgeon. But he finds that, like the region's other rich resources, these rare behemoths have come upon one predatory species they can't vanquish: the unfettered poacher," The Globe and Mail, February 4, 2006.

"The International Conservation Union, in its latest red list of endangered wildlife, gave polar bears threatened status in May, projecting a decline of 30 percent by midcentury from current populations, mainly due to projected losses of sea ice in a warming world. Polar bears are dependent on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, and as a pathway to coastal areas. The ice shrinkage has meant that polar bears, which are strong swimmers, have had to cover longer distances between ice and land."

—Felicity Barringer and Andrew C. Revkin, "Agency Proposes to List Polar Bears as Threatened," The New York Times, December 28, 2006.

"The study also adds to the growing weight of scientific knowledge about the problems faced by the world's wildlife and provides a broader context for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List, an annual report that focuses on which species are most in danger of extinction.

"Cameron Slatyer, the ABRS director, co-ordinated the study with more than 50 scientists around the world, including experts from the Natural History Museum in London.

"He said: 'This report gives the Red List more meaning because until you have some estimate of the detail of biodiversity on the planet, you cannot quantify how serious the extinction threat is.'"

—Sophie Tedmanson Sydney, "Counting them in and counting them out: census monitors births and deaths of the world's species," The Times (UK), September 30, 2009.

"The Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog, only discovered four years ago, is one of 1,895 amphibian species that could soon disappear from the wild because of deforestation and infection, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said.

"The Switzerland-based group surveyed 47,677 animals and plants for this year's 'Red List' of endangered species, determining that 17,291 of them are at risk of extinction.

"More than one in five of all known mammals, over a quarter of reptiles and 70 percent of plants are under threat, according to the survey, which featured over 2,800 new species compared with 2008."

—Frank Jordans, "Over 17,000 species threatened by extinction," Associated Press, November 3, 2009.

Also Known As (AKA)

The IUCN Red List

Links

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on the IUCN Red List
The IUCN Red List official Web site