Kerala to have its own regional red list of birds

Context

Kerala will soon have its own red list of birds. Once it gets ready, Kerala will be the first State to have a region-specific red list of birds.

Recently, Kerala got its first state Bird Atlas, perhaps Asia’s largest in terms of sampling effort, geographical extent, and species coverage derived from the aggregation of 25,000 checklists.
A first in India, this atlas has provided substantial baseline data about distribution and abundance of bird species across all major habitats.

The Kerala Bird Monitoring Collective led by Kerala Agricultural University and the Bird Count India will conduct the regional red list assessment.
Assessment will be done on the basis of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) guidelines.

The IUCN guidelines for preparing the red list have five main criteria.

The population size reduction measured over 10 years or three generations is one of the major guidelines
Geographic range on the basis of extent of occurrence or area of occupancy is another
Small population size and decline
very small or restricted population
quantitative analysis indicating the probability of extinction in the wild are the other criteria

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Speciesis the most authoritative, objective and comprehensive list of animals, plants and fungi that have been assessed for their risk of extinction.
The eight categories are:
- Extinct - no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died
- Extinct in the Wild - known only to survive in cultivation, in captivity or as a naturalised population well outside its historic range
- Critically Endangered - extremely high risk of extinction in the wild
- Endangered - very high risk of extinction in the wild
- Vulnerable - high risk of extinction in the wild
- Near Threatened - likely to qualify for a threatened category in the future
- Least Concern - does not qualify for a more at-risk category
- Data Deficient - not enough data to make an assessment
- A ninth category – Not Evaluated – is for species not yet assessed.