Red List Workshop Process

Red List Assessment value
The Red List assessments follow strict scientific criteria which have been developed over the last 15 years by some of the world's leading scientists in conservation. The criteria are designed to determine the threatened status of an individual species in terms of extinction, placing it into one of eight categories. The IUCN Red List Criteria and Categories are the most accepted and used measurement of global threat worldwide at species level.


The information generated from species level assessments is extremely important in highlighting taxonomic groups and regions that are under particular threat. It can flag individual species that are in need of immediate conservation attention, and also can bring species data together for the review of overall ecosystem health. The analysis of the data produced by the GMSA will be able to feed into global and regional conservation efforts by identifying hotspots and gap analysis, e.g., used for designating Marine Protected Areas.

The Red List categories are list below:

 
The Red List Criteria are applied to specific information about each species. The information collected is the most up-to-date information available, including published journals, fisheries data and government reports, etc. Our most important source of information however, is from our ever-growing network of expert participants. The wealth of information from our expert participants is captured during the GMSA Red List workshops. At the workshops, experts verify information and supply additional information, which is the on-the ground knowledge that would be near impossible to collect and capture any other way. This workshop methodology captures scientifically sound, peer-reviewed and most up-to-date information on each assessed species, to enable important decisions about the conservation of the marine environment to be made with confidence.

Red List assessments can also be done by individuals outside of the workshop setting: see the IUCN Red list website for more information: http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/redlists/process.htm

GMSA Red List workshop methodology
The main goal of the GMSA is to support and instigate Red List workshops that will increase the number of marine species on the Red List of Threatened Species. We make sure that the assessments are consistent with all the other species on the Red List so that comparisons can be made across groups and regions. The GMSA team organize and facilitate the workshops. We also manage the data needed for the assessments, which involves data collection, supporting contracted data collectors, and the review and evaluation of data, thus ensuring high quality and consistency of the Red List assessments.

We invariably work with project partners, and usually with a host-region partner with local support. This support is needed to help organize the workshop in terms of logistics, for data collection and for identifying and recruiting the right experts to attend the workshop. Conservation International is one of our main project partners, for both the overall GMSA initiative and for individual regional workshops.

The workshops are designed using two main elements: region and taxonomy. The design depends on the type of expertise available for making Red List assessments. Some species groups are easier to assess on a global level. For example, we recently completed a workshop on the groupers of the world with the assistance of the IUCN Grouper and Wrasses Specialist Group. In this instance the expertise was available for one identified taxonomic group covering the world.

It is not always possible to do global assessments. Often it is more manageable to split taxonomic groups into regions (as expertise often exists regionally), and then combine the regional assessments into a global assessment once all regions are complete. For example, the sharks and rays of the world were assessed in five separate regional workshops, and the reef building corals, which have been assessed in the Caribbean region, the Eastern Tropical Pacific region, and this July, will be assessed in the Indo-Pacific region. This method of assessment does not affect endemic species which can be globally assessed within a regional workshop.

The timeframe of these assessment workshops vary. Ideally, planning begins at least six months ahead of when the workshop takes place. This gives time for data collection, map construction, identification of expert participants and the logistical organization of the workshop. After the workshop is complete, another six months is required for data clean-up and review, and the evaluation process. After this process is completed the assessments are published on the Red List of Threatened Species website.

Currently the GMSA has core funding, but separate fundraising is required for each workshop. So far we have raised funds for individual workshops through the IUCN and Conservation International, along with several other organizations such as the U.S. State Department (through the IUCN), the Institute of London in Regent's Park, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the IUCN Mediterranean Regional Office. The cost of a workshop is dependent on the number of species being assessed, and the number of participants invited to the workshop. The average cost of a workshop, with data collection contracts factored in, is approximately $40,000 - $60,000.

The duration of a workshop is also dependent on the number of species and which taxonomic group is being assessed. The amount of information available for each one can vary greatly. For example, there is much more information available for a species of tuna or grouper (and also a more potentially contentious assessment) than for a species of seagrass or cryptic goby, and therefore it would take longer to work through an assessment of the former. There are often concurrent sessions running at workshops, and the maximum number of species to assess in one day for a session is approximately 25 species.

Workshop process in more detail:

Pre-workshop data collection
The GMSA team/contracted expert data collectors gather all the recent data on the status of each individual species into the IUCN SIS Data Entry Module (DEM). The database should be as complete as possible prior to the workshop to make things run more smoothly. The data required to make the assessments is outlined below:

• Taxonomy: Information on any taxonomic issues related to the species.
• Distribution: A summary of the global distribution of the species. A GIS shapefile is created for every species and is reviewed at the workshop.
• Population: Anything known on population sizes, abundance (rare, scarce, common, etc), and the degree of fragmentation. Trends in abundance over time.
• Habitat and ecology: Anything relating to the species' biology that is relevant to the assessment. Habitat preferences and depth range information, size, reproductive biology, age at maturity, growth, diet, trophic dynamics and life history.
• Threats: Any known, probable or potential threats - e.g. fisheries, trade, habitat destruction, pollution, mariculture and climate change.
• Conservation actions: Those in existence, (e.g. protected species status, protected areas that encompass part or all of a species' range), and those required in the future (within 5 years).

We also ask the invited experts to help with the initial data collection by providing published information and often helping to fill out specific accounts.

It is very important that we get the appropriate people to participate in the workshops to make the assessments, and we aim to get the leading taxonomists, ecologists and conservationists at the workshop. We rely on our regional partners to help us make sure these people are identified and invited so expertise for all the species and regions are represented.

Pre-workshop data review
The GMSA has designed a website to assist the review of data prior to the workshop. Once the initial data collection is done, the species accounts and maps are posted in secure password-protected web pages so that the experts can review the information prior to the workshop, and will have an idea of what information to bring with them.

Workshop
The workshop is where the hard work is done. Each species account in the database is reviewed individually by the experts. This is facilitated by the GMSA team and trained others from the IUCN Species Programme and Conservation International. This is when the expert participants supply data (otherwise impossible to retrieve) and work through applying the Red List Criteria to the data. The result for each species is an assigned Red List Category.

Post workshop data clean up and review
Much information is captured during the workshop; however the Red List assessment process continues after the workshop. The workshop follow-up work involves the retrieval of important references and additional information, and grammatical reviewing. The text entered at the workshop is captured in the authority files within the database to allow analysis of the information. This process takes some time, and often required some contracted or volunteer time to complete.

Once the information follow-up in the database has been completed, the revised species accounts and maps are then once again posted on the secure website pages for review by the expert participants. There is usually a one-month window for review when the experts can make additional changes or corrections to the information, or contest a designated Red List Category.

Evaluation
The evaluation process for Red List assessments is to ensure that the Red List category assigned to each species is consistent with what is written in the Red List rationale (a short summary to explain the Red List Category assigned) and in the text fields. It is important to ensure that anyone looking at the account can follow the reasoning and information used, and come to the same conclusion as the assessors. The information on which the assessments are based has already been peer-reviewed through the workshop process. However, the evaluation process makes sure that all the assessments are consistent and that the Red List Criteria have been used correctly.

A Red List Authority on the species group is assigned the job of evaluating the accounts, along with the GMSA office. It is important that at least one member of the evaluation team be an impartial non-expert so that no scientific assumptions are made within the assessment. The evaluation team must also include at least one expert that may or may not have been at the workshop itself. All the species accounts will pass through the GMSA office for this final evaluation before they go to the Red List office in Cambridge. Once this process is complete, the species assessment will be published on the Red List website. Once placed on the Red List website they are available for anyone to download and use.