Comparison with other Red Lists

International Red Lists

In terms of biogeography, the boundaries of countries and states are artificial lines that do not exist for animals, plants and fungi. As a consequence, some Red List assessments are more relevant when applied to large, uniform ecosystems, such as the marine areas that are bordered by a number of different countries. A good example is given by the ‘HELCOM Red List of Baltic Sea species in danger of becoming extinct‘.

The most important and internationally most frequently cited Red List is the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List. The categories of threat developed by IUCN are only partly comparable to those used in the German Red List. The IUCN categories of threat are:

It should be noted that the assessment procedure according to the IUCN protocol differs from the Red List methodology used in Germany. Therefore, threat assessments are not directly comparable. The IUCN Red Lists have a narrower focus on the risk of extinction of a species and place less emphasis on long-term population trends. IUCN does not update the assessment of all species within one group of organisms at the same time. Instead, IUCN Red List assessments for sub-groups or individual species are revised as soon as new, relevant data become available.

Red List of Federal States (‘Bundesländer‘)

Below the national level, Red Lists are produced in all German federal states (‘Bundesländer‘) and in other defined regions. They are published by the relevant nature conservation agencies or ministries in the federal states or the responsible Senate of the city states (in the case of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg). Over the past 10 years, almost all federal state agencies have adopted the protocol and assessment criteria developed by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.

Red Lists of Biotope Types and Plant Communities  

It is not only individual species that are affected by various threats. It can be often quite instructive to examine conservation concerns at a community, habitat or ecosystem-level. The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation therefore publishes a Red List of Threatened Plant Communities for the country (‘Rote Liste der gefährdeten Pflanzengesellschaften Deutschlands‘) and a Red List of Threatened Biotope Types in Germany (‘Rote Liste der gefährdeten Biotoptypen Deutschlands‘). These lists are based on a specific, standardized assessment and categorization process that differs slightly from that used for the species Red Lists. The development of these Red Lists is not organized by the German Red List Centre but by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.