IUCN Green Status of Species: a new standard to measure species recovery and conservation success

The session will introduce IUCN members to the Green Status of Species, developed in response to a mandate from those members in 2012. The Green Status aims to provide a standardized metric for assessing species recovery. It is entirely complementary to, and indeed part of, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The latter is a standardised way to assess what we want to avoid – extinction - but not what we want to achieve – recovery. The Green Status aims to provide just such a species recovery metric, thereby incentivizing species conservation. The session will highlight how applying the Green Status approach allows us to assess past conservation impact, conservation dependence and potential future recovery for a species. This new tool allows for assessment of the progress of a species towards full recovery, helps define objective targets for species conservation planning, and encourages ambitious conservation goals.