IUCN marks 60th anniversary of Red List with year-long campaign to accelerate species assessments

The celebration of the milestone of the IUCN Red List – first launched in 1964, then covering only mammals and birds – came the same day that a new update was unveiled, including the first Global Tree Assessment that showed that 38% of the world’s trees are at risk of extinction. A majority of the world’s trees are now accounted for on the Red List, representing over one-quarter of the more than 166,000 species on the list. 

“Today we celebrate the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species turning 60. It is quite a moment and a testament to the work of many people around the world – the Red List partners, IUCN experts, members of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. They are the ones that really do the work. We cannot take action on species loss without the Red List and the barometer of life it gives,” said Dr Grethel Aguilar, IUCN Director General.

At the gathering in Cali, Dr Aguilar was joined by IUCN President Razan Al Mubarak, and IUCN Patron of Nature Patricia Richard.

At the event IUCN also announced the launch of a one-year social media campaign to raise awareness and funds to accelerate species assessments and reassessments, which will culminate at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Abu Dhabi in October 2025.

According to IUCN Red List experts, increasing assessments to at least 260,000 species and reassessing 142,000 of those species will help monitor trends in change of status, providing a stronger base to enable better conservation and policy decisions. In short, it will help build the IUCN Red List into a more complete barometer of life.

The impact of the IUCN Red List on conservation outcomes has been shown to be real. In 2000, the scimitar horned oryx was declared Extinct in the Wild on the list. But concerted efforts at conservation have resulted in a dramatic reversal of fortune for the species, having been updated to “Endangered” in 2023. Earlier this year, the conservation status of the Iberian lynx was improved from Endangered to Vulnerable, largely because of conservation efforts that included increasing the abundance of its prey, protecting and restoring its Mediterranean habitat, and reducing deaths caused by human activity.