The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is the world’s most comprehensive database on the conservation status of species. It uses a framework of Categories and Criteria to classify species according to their extinction risk.

Apart from informing about the state of species, the Red List provides a baseline to integrate biodiversity needs into decision-making, e.g. by guiding scientific research, informing policy and conventions, and by informing conservation planning.

The Red List is not a list of conservation priorities, and moving a species to a lower threat category does not imply that a species no longer requires conservation attention.

Each species is assessed against the full range of IUCN Categories and Criteria using all information that can be reasonably applied to that species, and incorporates explicit acknowledgment of uncertainty in arriving at the final categorisation.