The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is widely recognized as the most comprehensive, objective global approach for evaluating the conservation status of plant and animal species. From its small beginning, The IUCN Red List has grown in size and complexity and now plays an increasingly prominent role in guiding conservation activities of governments, NGOs and scientific institutions. The introduction in 1994 of a scientifically rigorous approach to determine risks of extinction that is applicable to all species, has become a world standard.
Note: For reptiles, fishes, molluscs, other invertebrates, plants, fungi \& protists: there are still many species that have not yet been assessed for the IUCN Red List and therefore their status is not known (i.e., these groups have not yet been completely assessed). Therefore the figures presented below for these groups should be interpreted as the number of species known to be threatened within those species that have been assessed to date, and not as the overall total number of threatened species for each group.
We advise users to abstain from making comparisons through time using this data, given that there could be changes to the methodology for the country reports.