The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological species. A series of Regional Red Lists, which assess the risk of extinction to species within a political management unit, are also produced by countries and organizations.
A population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck is a sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events such as famines, earthquakes, floods, fires, disease, and droughts; or human activities such as genocide, specicide, widespread violence or intentional culling. Such events can reduce the variation in the gene pool of a population; thereafter, a smaller population, with a smaller genetic diversity, remains to pass on genes to future generations of offspring. Genetic diversity remains lower, increasing only when gene flow from another population occurs or very slowly increasing with time as random mutations occur. This results in a reduction in the robustness of the population and in its ability to adapt to and survive selecting environmental changes, such as climate change or a shift in available resources. Alternatively, if survivors of the bottleneck are the individuals with the greatest genetic fitness, the frequency of the fitter genes within the gene pool is increased, while the pool itself is reduced.
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.
Habitat conservation is a management practice that seeks to conserve, protect and restore habitats and prevent species extinction, fragmentation or reduction in range. It is a priority of many groups that cannot be easily characterized in terms of any one ideology.
Species reintroduction is the deliberate release of a species into the wild, from captivity or other areas where the organism is capable of survival. The goal of species reintroduction is to establish a healthy, genetically diverse, self-sustaining population to an area where it has been extirpated, or to augment an existing population. Species that may be eligible for reintroduction are typically threatened or endangered in the wild. However, reintroduction of a species can also be for pest control; for example, wolves being reintroduced to a wild area to curb an overpopulation of deer. Because reintroduction may involve returning native species to localities where they had been extirpated, some prefer the term "reestablishment".
The Allee effect is a phenomenon in biology characterized by a correlation between population size or density and the mean individual fitness of a population or species.
Minimum viable population (MVP) is a lower bound on the population of a species, such that it can survive in the wild. This term is commonly used in the fields of biology, ecology, and conservation biology. MVP refers to the smallest possible size at which a biological population can exist without facing extinction from natural disasters or demographic, environmental, or genetic stochasticity. The term "population" is defined as a group of interbreeding individuals in similar geographic area that undergo negligible gene flow with other groups of the species. Typically, MVP is used to refer to a wild population, but can also be used for ex situ conservation.
Conservation genetics is an interdisciplinary subfield of population genetics that aims to understand the dynamics of genes in a population for the purpose of natural resource management and extinction prevention. Researchers involved in conservation genetics come from a variety of fields including population genetics, natural resources, molecular ecology, biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics. Genetic diversity is one of the three fundamental measures of biodiversity, so it is an important consideration in the wider field of conservation biology.
Genetic viability is the ability of the genes present to allow a cell, organism or population to survive and reproduce. The term is generally used to mean the chance or ability of a population to avoid the problems of inbreeding. Less commonly genetic viability can also be used in respect to a single cell or on an individual level.
Captive breeding, also known as captive propagation, is the process of keeping plants or animals in controlled environments, such as wildlife reserves, zoos, botanic gardens, and other conservation facilities. It is sometimes employed to help species that are being threatened by the effects of human activities such as climate change, habitat loss, fragmentation, overhunting or fishing, pollution, predation, disease, and parasitism.
Banksia cuneata, commonly known as matchstick banksia or Quairading banksia, is an endangered species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae. Endemic to southwest Western Australia, it belongs to Banksia subg. Isostylis, a sub-genus of three closely related Banksia species with inflorescences or flower clusters that are dome-shaped heads rather than characteristic Banksia flower spikes. A shrub or small tree up to 5 m (16 ft) high, it has prickly foliage and pink and cream flowers. The common name Matchstick Banksia arises from the blooms in late bud, the individual buds of which resemble matchsticks. The species is pollinated by honeyeaters (Meliphagidae).
An endangered species recovery plan, also known as a species recovery plan, species action plan, species conservation action, or simply recovery plan, is a document describing the current status, threats and intended methods for increasing rare and endangered species population sizes. Recovery plans act as a foundation from which to build a conservation effort to preserve animals which are under threat of extinction. More than 320 species have died out and the world is continuing a rate of 1 species becoming extinct every two years. Climate change is also linked to several issues relating to extinct species and animals' quality of life.
The Threatened Species Protection Act 1995, is an act of the Parliament of Tasmania that provides the statute relating to conservation of flora and fauna. Its long title is An Act to provide for the protection and management of threatened native flora and fauna and to enable and promote the conservation of native flora and fauna. It received the royal assent on 14 November 1995.
In conservation biology, latent extinction risk is a measure of the potential for a species to become threatened.
Graeme James Caughley was a New Zealand population ecologist, conservation biologist, and researcher. He combined empirical research with mathematical models, and supported the declining population paradigm.
In ecology, extinction debt is the future extinction of species due to events in the past. The phrases dead clade walking and survival without recovery express the same idea.
Assisted migration is "the intentional establishment of populations or meta-populations beyond the boundary of a species' historic range for the purpose of tracking suitable habitats through a period of changing climate...." It is therefore a nature conservation tactic by which plants or animals are intentionally moved to geographic locations better suited to their present or future habitat needs and climate tolerances — and to which they are unable to migrate or disperse on their own.
Conservation behavior is the interdisciplinary field about how animal behavior can assist in the conservation of biodiversity. It encompasses proximate and ultimate causes of behavior and incorporates disciplines including genetics, physiology, behavioral ecology, and evolution.
Genetic rescue is seen as a mitigation strategy designed to restore genetic diversity and reduce extinction risks in small, isolated and frequently inbred populations. It is largely implemented through translocation, a type of demographic rescue and technical migration that adds individuals to a population to prevent its potential extinction. This demographic rescue may be similar to genetic rescue, as each increase population size and/or fitness. This overlap in meaning has led some researchers to consider a more detailed definition for each type of rescue that details 'assessment and documentation of pre- and post-translocation genetic ancestry'. Not every example of genetic rescue is clearly successful and the current definition of genetic rescue does not mandate that the process result in a 'successful' outcome. Despite an ambiguous definition, genetic rescue is viewed positively, with many perceived successes.
Richard (Dick) Frankham is an Australian biologist, author, and academic. He is an Emeritus Professor in Biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
