Last updated | August 22, 2025

Indicator information

Name

Species lists and statistics

Unit

Counting of number of threatened species at site and country levels. 

Area of interest

Species lists have been calculated and distributed through REST services at country and protected area level and are available in KCBD - Global Biodiversity Data Viewer (GBDV) at country level.

Related targets

	Sustainable Development Goal 14 on life below water
	Sustainable Development Goal 15 on life on land
	Global Biodiversity Framework Target 4
	Global Biodiversity Framework Target 6
	Global Biodiversity Framework Target 9

Policy question

Where are the areas in the world hosting most species? How many species in a country have their ranges covered at least partially by protected areas? How many threatened species are endemic and how many of these have their ranges protected? Where are the main gaps in terms of species observations? These are key questions for assessing whether conservation measures have been taken to prevent extinctions. Also, detailed species statistics contribute to GBF Targets 4, 6 and 9 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Use and interpretation

Species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and documented in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ^TM (RLTS) have been used to provide end-users of the KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer with theoretical lists of species in protected areas (IUCN, 2025b; Birdlife, 2024) as well as country summary statistics on the number of endemic and threatened species (IUCN, 2025c).

Species included in the Red List are classified into the following categories based on Red List criteria such as rate of decline, population size, area of geographic distribution, and degree of population and distribution fragmentation:

Threatened species fall into one of the following three categories:

1. Critically Endangered (CR) – Extremely high risk of extinction in the wild.
2. Endangered (EN) – High risk of extinction in the wild.
3. Vulnerable (VU) – High risk of endangerment in the wild.

All other species fall in these last categories:

4. Near Threatened (NT) – Likely to become endangered in the near future.
5. Least Concern (LC) – Lowest risk. Does not qualify for a more at risk category. Widespread and abundant taxa are included in this category.
6. Data Deficient (DD) – Not enough data to make an assessment of its risk of extinction.
7. Not Evaluated (NE) – Has not yet been evaluated against the criteria.

The IUCN further provides information about endemic species, i.e. species occurring naturally within one country only.

Site level statistics:

Lists and counts of Threatened (Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable) and Near Threatened species are derived from the overlay of the Protected Areas boundaries with the species ranges provided by the IUCN for Corals (Anthozoa and Hydrozoa classes aggregated), Sharks, Rays & Chimaeras,  Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds (assessments are provided by IUCN, spatial ranges are provided by Birdlife) and Mammals. Note that species will not necessarily be present in the Protected Area. Species ranges provided by IUCN and Birdlife are mapped as generalized polygons which often include areas of unsuitable habitat, and therefore species may not occur in all of the areas where they are mapped. In general, for range-restricted taxa, ranges are mapped with a higher degree of accuracy, sometimes down to the level of individual subpopulations, compared with more widely distributed species. See http://www.iucnredlist.org/ for more details. Expert-based lists of species can thus significantly differ from the indicative lists provided here.

We provide the following two tables regarding species, both derived from the overlay of the park boundaries with the species range for the selected taxa:

1. Species summary data
2. Species lists

Country statistics:

Information regarding the RLTS has been used in two ways at the country level:

1. Country summary statistics on threatened and endemic species are expert based and proposed in the KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer as reported by the IUCN in their summary tables: https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/summary-statistics
2. Country lists of (protected) Threatened (Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable) and Near Threatened species are derived by the previously described overlay within protected areas and species ranges, aggregating the results by the ISO3 code reported for the Protected Area by WCMC. Note that species will not necessarily be present in the country. Species ranges provided by the IUCN are mapped as generalized polygons which often include areas of unsuitable habitat, and therefore species may not occur in all of the areas where they are mapped. In general, for range-restricted taxa, ranges are mapped with a higher degree of accuracy, sometimes down to the level of individual subpopulations, compared with more widely distributed species. See http://www.iucnredlist.org/  for more details. Expert-based country lists of species can thus significantly differ from the indicative lists provided here.

The KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer could show also richness (Figure 1), calculated at global level overlapping the selected taxa distribution maps.

The KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer also provides a ranking of the protected areas within each country in terms of total number of threatened and near-threatened species.

Overall, the species distribution maps used for the species statistics cover more than 36,000 species. These maps invariably represent current, known limits of distribution for individual species within their native historical range (Table 1)

The KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer also provides layers made available from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) showing species occurrences as reported from many sources, including everything from museum specimens collected in the 18th and 19th century to geotagged smartphone photos shared by amateur naturalists in recent days and weeks. This dataset may help you identifying information gaps and factors limiting the dissemination of biodiversity information that are recognized as priorities both at the political and scientific levels of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). See https://www.gbif.org for more details.

Key caveats

The species list produced for each protected area is derived from the processing of the data from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ^TM and is therefore depending on the quality of the spatial data.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ^TM is the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global conservation status of animal, fungi and plant species. It contains a rich compendium of supporting information of the distribution range, ecological requirements, habitats and threats to species and on conservation actions that can be taken to reduce or avoid extinctions. For further details, see www.iucnredlist.org.  Global species maps from the red list represent current, known limits of distribution for individual species within their native historical range. Although these maps have many uses, they generally have a coarse resolution and consequent limitations. Species ranges are mapped as generalized polygons which often include areas of unsuitable habitat, and therefore species may not occur in all of the areas where they are mapped. In general, for range-restricted taxa, ranges are mapped with a higher degree of accuracy, sometimes down to the level of individual subpopulations, compared with more widely distributed species. 

Indicator status

Indicator to measure species conservation under GBF targets 4, 6 and 9. 

Available data and resources

Data

Species lists are available for each country protected portion from the KCBD Global Biodiversity Data Viewer 

Update frequency

Planned annually.

Code

Computed on PostgreSQL 17with PostGIS 3.5spatial extension. No codes publicly available yet.

Species occurrences are obtained directly from the GBIF API, see more details at https://www.gbif.org/developer/species

Methodology

Range maps of all birds, amphibians, mammals, corals and rays and sharks assessed globally the IUCN (2025.1 version of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species ^TM (RLTS)) have been used to generate country and site level statistics.

Import has been restricted to polygons that are categorized by IUCN with the following attributes:

• the presence is either extant, or probably extant (maintained for compliance with previous analyzes);
• the origin is either native or introduced;
• the seasonality is breeding, non-breeding or resident.

The above polygons have been rasterized at the resolution of 300m, then dissolved (reducing the redundancy of multiple ranges by species).

The species statistics were then obtained by computing the spatial intersection of:

• the distribution range data for species;
• country, ecoregions, and the entire set of protected areas from the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) for all designated protected areas (PAs), excluding UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (for more details, see Juffe Bignoli et al. (2024)).

The number of threatened species by country as reported by the IUCN are directly derived from the IUCN’s summary statistics (IUCN, 2025c).

Input datasets

References

Birdlife (2024). Bird species distribution maps of the world. Version 2024-1. http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/requestdis. Received on 8 January 2025.

Dinerstein et al. (2017), An Ecoregion-Based Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm, BioScience, Volume 67, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 534–545, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/bix014

GBIF.org (2021), GBIF Home Page. Available from: https://www.gbif.org  [27 April 2021].

IUCN (2025a). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Spatial data, Version 2025.1. https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/spatial-data-download.  Published on April 2025.

IUCN (2025b). IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Non-spatial data, Version 2025.2. https://www.iucnredlist.org/search.  Published on April 2025.

IUCN (2025c). IUCN Red List version 2025-1. Tables 5, 6, 8. Summary of the number of threatened species by country. http://www.iucnredlist.org/about/summary-statistics (2025.1)

Juffe-Bignoli et al. (2024) Delivering Systematic and Repeatable Area-Based Conservation Assessments: From Global to Local Scales. Land 2024, 13, 1506. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13091506

Lázaro, C., Mandrici, A., Delli, G., Caudullo, G., Bourgoin, C. et al., Challenges in integrating global environmental data with GISCO administrative layers – A GIS perspective, Publications Office of the European Union, 2025. https://dx.doi.org/10.2760/8183010

Nature Conservancy (2012), The Marine Ecoregions and Pelagic Provinces of the World. GIS layers developed by The Nature Conservancy with multiple partners, combined from Spalding et al. (2007) and Spalding et al. (2012). Cambridge (UK): The Nature Conservancy. DOIs: 10.1641/B570707; 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2011.12.016. Data URL: http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/38

Spalding MD, Fox HE, Allen GR, Davidson N, Ferdaña ZA, Finlayson M, Halpern BS, Jorge MA, Lombana A, Lourie SA, Martin KD, McManus E, Molnar J, Recchia CA, Robertson J (2007). Marine Ecoregions of the World: a bioregionalization of coast and shelf areas. BioScience 57: 573-583. doi: 10.1641/B570707. Data URL: http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/38

Spalding MD, Agostini VN, Rice J, Grant SM (2012). Pelagic provinces of the world): a biogeographic classification of the world’s surface pelagic waters. Ocean and Coastal Management 60: 19-30. DOI: 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2011.12.016. Data URL: http://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/38

UNEP-WCMC & IUCN (2025). Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) [On-line], [January/2025], Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. www.protectedplanet.net