Publisher :
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2008
Thematic : Sea Turtles
Language : English
Note
The Red List of Threatened Species, produced by the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature and Natural Resources/World Conservation Union (IUCN) classifies the global
populations of all 7 sea turtle species, except the flatback Natator depressus, as Endangered or Critically
Endangered. However, the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group (MTSG), which carries out
the assessments for the IUCN, is experiencing internal debate over the relevance and usefulness of
such statements. Assigning a distinct Red List category to the global population, as a single management
unit, does not capture the reality of regional and local populations that tend to have different
(positive or negative) trajectories. From a technical viewpoint, setting the time scale for assessment at
3 generations, which is 60 to 100+ yr for sea turtles, means few reference points are available for
quantifying past changes in abundance. Moreover, it hardly establishes a sense of urgency for action
to prevent future changes over long time scales. The application of current Red List criteria, resulting
in flawed categorizations, creates problems of credibility. When a species that may number in the millions
in an ocean basin is classified as being at the same ‘very high risk of extinction in the wild,’ as a
species represented by just a few individuals, there is something fundamentally wrong with the
assessment system. We suggest that MTSG members desist from using the current Red List criteria to
generate implausible global assessments of extinction risk and instead concentrate their efforts on
developing more realistic and credible criteria, perhaps for application at the regional level.
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Keywords : Sphenomorphus fasciatus
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
