European Red List Of Reptiles

"The European Red List is a review of the conservation status of c. 6,000 European species (mammals, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fishes, butterflies, dragonflies, and selected groups of beetles, molluscs, and vascular plants) according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level - in order that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status. This publication summarises results for Europe's 151 native species of terrestrial and freshwater reptiles. Approximately one fifth of these species are threatened with extinction at the European level as a result of threats including habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, pollution, overhasting, and deliberate persecution." -Ed.

The 1994 IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals was a major advance on its predecessors in clarity of layout and amount of information presented. This is taken further in the 1996 edition, which is also the first global compilation to use the complete new IUCN Red List category system.

The Mediterranean-rim countries hold around 400 million people and 135 million of them live on the coast. A steady migration towards coastal areas, specifically in the south and east of the Mediterranean, is causing pressure on the coastal environment and, more importantly, on its biodiversity. In this second Mediterranean regional assessment, all the reptile and amphibian species existing within the region of study have been evaluated for their global conservation status. This assessment aims to assist in regional planning and to help identify internationally important sites for biodiversity. Like the first in the series, it also hopes to encourage development of a network of regional experts to enable future assessments and the continued updating of the baseline dataset.

The Eastern Mediterranean region supports just over 4.4% of the global human population yet contains only 1.1% of its renewable water resources, which are under constant threat from the impacts of unsustainable water withdrawal, dam development and climate change. This IUCN report and accompanying dataset represents a major advance in the provision of information to help incorporate biodiversity needs into water development planning processes within an Integrated River Basin Management framework. This volume includes species information compiled for each river and lake sub-basin and incorporates information from the assessment conducted by IUCN's Global Species Programme, in collaboration with its partners, of the status and distribution of all described species of freshwater fishes, molluscs, odonates, and plants from across the Eastern Mediterranean with existing information for species of freshwater dependent amphibians, birds, crustaceans, and mammals. This work represents the most comprehensive assessment yet of freshwater biodiversity at the species level for this part of the world.

A detailed description and analysis of European nature conservation and its achievements, focussing on the EU and last forty years.

This assessment is the first overview of the conservation status of 877 northern African freshwater species belonging to five taxonomic groupsfish, molluscs, dragonflies and damselflies, freshwater crabs and aquatic plantsin accordance with the IUCN regional Red List guidelines. Species at risk of regional extinction are mapped and conservation measures are proposed to reduce the probability of future declines.