Conservation Designations for UK Taxa
Over the past thirty years, numerous lists of conservation
status have been produced - Red Lists, Biodiversity Action Plan
Priority Lists, species listed on European Directives, species
listed on the Schedules of the Wildlife & Countryside Act,
together with lists of rare and scarce species. There is
considerable overlap between these and some species appear on
several of them - for example the otter
Lutra lutra, and
the marsh saxifrage
Saxifraga hirculus have as many as six
"badges".
JNCC has attempted to collate many
of the current lists into one place and make this available to
users as a downloadable
spreadsheet of species designations. The list
contains over 8000 "taxa" that have been assigned some form of
rarity, threat or legal status. Note that we refer to "taxa" rather
than "species" in this context because many of the entities on the
list are sub-species, ie conservation priority action has been
identified for a given sub-species but not the species as a
whole.
Although this list has been
available from the JNCC website for more than a year, we have
recently made several amendments to it to correct previous errors
and to make it more user friendly.
The content has also been updated
for lichens, mosses and liverworts, and we have used this format to
formally update the previously published Red Data List for Vascular
Plants.
We do not claim that these lists are
fully comprehensive, for example it does not incorporate all of the
marine species "badges" or the recently published list of Scottish
species. It does not include lists of species that are still being
finalised e.g. UK red lists awaiting publication. We intend to
update this list at least twice annually. Please let us know
if you find any errors, or if you would like to see any other lists
added to the compilation.
Find out more: