IUCN Red List of Threatened Species - Regional Assessment

The European Red List is a review of the conservation status of c.6,000 European species (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fishes, butterflies, dragonflies, and selected groups of beetles, molluscs, and vascular plants) according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level – in order that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status.

Biodiversity within inland water ecosystems in southern Africa is highly diverse and of great importance to livelihoods and economies, however, development activities are not always compatible with the conservation of this diversity and it is poorly represented in the development planning process. One of the main reasons is a lack of readily available information on the status and distribution of inland water taxa.

Numerous scientific studies show that biodiversity in Europe has been declining rapidly for some time and that this pattern has been matched by the great periods of expansion and intensification of land use. This first assessment of the Red List status of Europe’s and the European Union's mammals shows us that 15% of our species are threatened with extinction, 27% were identified as declining and another 33% had an unknown population trend.