The World Conservation Union (IUCN) www.iucn.org is an international organisation involved in conservation. One of the most important activities of the IUCN is to keep a record of plants and animals around the world that are threatened with extinction. They publish information about these species in Red Lists www.redlist.org. We need this information to help us save these plants, animals and their habitats.

We use many words to describe threatened plants and animals. Rare, threatened, vulnerable, endangered, extinct … what do all these words mean?

 Many of these words describe Red List categories. They tell us which plants and animals are more or less likely to become extinct. Each category has a detailed definition but we will use the simple definitions. You can find the detailed definitions on the Red List website www.redlist.org.

One word that we haven’t included in our table of definitions is Rare. It is not used as a Red List category because not all rare species are threatened. Some species are naturally rare because they live only in a small area, like on a single mountain peak or in one cave. If its habitat is not threatened, the species may continue to survive for many years. However, if a species that was once common becomes rare, then this species is definitely threatened.