The IUCN Red List of Endangered Species

Hi everyone,

We have been mentioning the IUCN in quite a few of our latest posts, so I just want to clarify what the IUCN is. IUCN stands for International Union for Conversation of Nature.

When we mention the IUCN, we are normally talking about the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This is basically a list of endangered species. There are three main categories in this list: Extinct, Threatened and Lower Risk.

The category Extinct consists of

Extinct (EX) - is extinct in both the wild and captivity
Extinct in the Wild (EW) - is extinct in the wild but not in captivity

The category of Threatened consists of

Critically Endangered (CR) - in an extremely critical state, very likely to be EW in the near future
Endangered (EN) - likely to be in EW in the near future
Vulnerable (VU) - considered to be at risk of human-caused extinction in the near future without any further human intervention

The category of Lower Risk consists of

Near Threatened (NT) - close to being at risk of human-caused extinction
Least Concern (LC) - unlikely to become extinct in the near future (this is the category that we want all animals to be in)

I hope this sorts out any possible misunderstandings and questions. 

Image:
tiger, owned by Mathias Appel (on flickr.com), is licensed by CC0 1.0.

Source:
https://www.iucnredlist.org