Stuart H. M. Butchart’s research while affiliated with BirdLife International and other places

Biodiversity metrics are increasingly in demand for informing government, business, and civil society decisions. However, it is not always clear to end users how these metrics differ or for what purpose they are best suited. We seek to answer these questions using a database of 573 biodiversity-related metrics, indicators, indices, and layers, which address aspects of genetic diversity, species, and ecosystems. We provide examples of indicators and their uses within the state–pressure–response–benefits framework that is widely used in conservation science. Considering complementarity across this framework, we recommend a small number of metrics considered most pertinent for use in decision-making by governments and businesses. We conclude by highlighting five future directions: increasing the importance of national metrics, ensuring wider uptake of business metrics, agreeing on a minimum set of metrics for government and business use, automating metric calculation through use of technology, and generating sustainable funding for metric production.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is the most ambitious agreement on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use to date. It calls for a whole-of-society approach aimed at halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity worldwide. To support its implementation, the Monitoring Framework of the GBF lays out how Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are expected to report their progress. Given the need for capacity-building and investment to operationalize the Monitoring Framework, Parties established an expert group to provide guidance on its implementation, including a gap analysis to identify the strengths and limitations of the Monitoring Framework. We present the results of the gap analysis, highlight where more work on the Monitoring Framework is needed and provide recommendations on implementing and improving it to allow effective and comprehensive tracking of progress across all elements of the GBF's Goals and Targets. We find that using required indicators (headline and binary), the Monitoring Framework fully covers 20% of the Goals' and Targets' elements and partially covers an additional 42%. Including optional (component and complementary) indicators improves full coverage to 24% and an additional 49% partial coverage. For 13% of elements, no indicators are available. While the Monitoring Framework will enable progress towards meeting the Goals and Targets of the GBF, substantial investment is still required to collect the necessary data to compute indicators, infer change, and effectively monitor progress. We highlight both immediate and long-term solutions and offer guidance on important next steps that will progressively improve the efficacy of the Monitoring Framework.

Trade represents a significant threat to many wild species and is often clandestine and poorly monitored. Information on which species are most prevalent in trade and potentially threatened by it therefore remains fragmentary. We used 7 global data sets on birds in trade to identify species or groups of species at particular risk and assessed the extent to which they were congruent in terms of the species recorded in trade. We used the frequency with which species were recorded in the data sets as the basis for a trade prevalence score that was applied to all bird species globally. Literature searches and questionnaire surveys were used to develop a list of species known to be heavily traded to validate the trade prevalence score. The score was modeled to identify significant predictors of trade. Although the data sets sampled different parts of the broad trade spectrum, congruence among them was statistically strong in all comparisons. Furthermore, the frequency with which species were recorded within data sets was positively correlated with their occurrence across data sets, indicating that the trade prevalence score captured information on trade volume. The trade prevalence score discriminated well between species identified from semi‐independent assessments as heavily or unsustainably traded and all other species. Globally, 45.1% of all bird species and 36.7% of globally threatened bird species had trade prevalence scores ≥1. Species listed in Appendices I or II of CITES, species with large geographical distributions, and nonpasserines tended to have high trade prevalence scores. Speciose orders with high mean trade prevalence scores included Falconiformes, Psittaciformes, Accipitriformes, Anseriformes, Bucerotiformes, and Strigiformes. Despite their low mean prevalence score, Passeriformes accounted for the highest overall number of traded species of any order but had low representation in CITES appendices. Geographical hotspots where large numbers of traded species co‐occur differed among passerines (Southeast Asia and Eurasia) and nonpasserines (central South America, sub‐Saharan Africa, and India). This first attempt to quantify and map the relative prevalence in trade of all bird species globally can be used to identify species and groups of species that may be at particular risk of harm from trade and can inform conservation and policy interventions to reduce its adverse impacts.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species underpins much decision-making in conservation and plays a key role in monitoring the status and trends of biodiversity. However, the shortage of funds and assessor capacity slows the uptake of novel data and techniques, hampering its currency, applicability, consistency and long-term viability. To help address this, we developed sRedList, a user-friendly online platform that assists Red List assessors through a step-by-step process to estimate key parameters in a standardised and reproducible fashion. Through the platform, assessors can swiftly generate outputs including species' range maps, lists of countries of Web application GBIF Decision support occurrence, lower and upper bounds of area of occupancy, habitat preferences, trends in area of habitat, and levels of fragmentation. sRedList is compliant with the IUCN Red List guidelines and outputs are interoperable with the Species Information Service (SIS; the IUCN Red List database) in support of global, regional and national assessments and reassessments. sRedList can also help assessors prioritise species for reassessment. sRedList was released in October 2023, with a complete documentation package (including text documentation, 'cheatsheets', and 15 video tutorials), and will soon be highlighted in the official Red List online training course. sRedList will help to bridge the gap between extinction risk research and Red List assessment practice, increase the taxonomic coverage and consistency of assessments, and ensure the IUCN Red List is up-to-date to best support conservation policy and practice across the world.

The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework was adopted in December 2022 by the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The framework states outcomes for species to be achieved by 2050 in goal A and establishes a range of targets to reduce pressures on biodiversity and halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Target 4 calls for urgent recovery actions for species where the implementation of other targets is insufficient to eliminate extinction risk. We analyze key species elements of goal A and target 4, examine their meaning and clarify implementation needs. We emphasize that target 4 should not be seen simply as the species target, because effective implementation of all targets is essential to achieve the species ambitions in goal A, but, rather, as a target for species that require urgent focused actions and emphasize that an indicator is needed to measure the implementation of urgent management actions. We conclude by considering next steps to identify priorities, undertake further research, make use of resources, ensure cooperation and capacity development.

Understanding the consequences of past conservation efforts is essential to inform the means of maintaining and restoring species. Data from the IUCN Red List for 67,217 comprehensively assessed animal species were reviewed and analysed to determine (i) which conservation actions have been implemented for different species, (ii) which types of species have improved in state and (iii) which actions are likely to have driven the improvements. At least 51.8% (34,847) of assessed species have actions reported, mostly comprising protected areas (82.7%), with more actions reported for both terrestrial tetrapods and warm-water reef-building corals and fewer for fish, dragonflies and damselflies and crustaceans. Species at greater risk of extinction have a wider range of species-targeted actions reported compared to less threatened species, reflecting differences in documentation and conservation efforts. Six times more species have deteriorated rather than improved in their Red List category. Almost all species that improved have conservation actions in place; species that improved in state typically were historically at high risk of extinction, have smaller ranges and lacked a range of reported threats, particularly hunting and habitat loss or degradation. All types of conservation action were associated with improvements in state, especially reintroductions and invasive species control, alongside, for amphibians and birds, area management. This suggests a range of conservation interventions have successfully conserved some species at greatest risk but have rarely recovered populations to resilient levels. Scaling up the extent and intensity of conservation interventions, particularly landscape-scale actions that benefit broadly distributed species, is urgently needed to assist the recovery of biodiversity.

Biodiversity metrics are increasingly in demand for informing government, businesses, and civil society decisions. However, while there are many metrics available, it is not always clear to end-users how they differ or for what purpose they are best suited. This confusion undermines uptake. Here, we seek to clarify these questions by reviewing and presenting a database of 573 biodiversity-related metrics, indicators, indices and layers (hereafter ‘metrics’). Of these metrics, 227 are spatial data layers and 272 are temporal indicators. Assessed in relation to the pressure-state-response-benefits framework, 213 address only state, 118 address only pressures, 124 address only responses and 8 address only benefits. The remaining 110 relate to combinations of the four. Among the state indicators, 217 are bottom-up metrics (aggregated from individual components), 57 top-down (compiled through extrapolation), 8 are neither, and 1 is both; while 61 measure significance (‘biodiversity importance’) 86 intactness (‘biodiversity condition’), 5 both, and 131 are neither. These metrics address aspects of genetic diversity (19), species (106) and ecosystems (214), with 38 covering more than one aspect and 196 being general metrics. Considering complementarity across these characteristics, we recommend a small number of metrics considered most pertinent for use in decision-making by governments and businesses. We conclude by highlighting five future directions: increasing the importance of national metrics, ensuring wider uptake of business metrics, agreeing a minimum set of metrics for government and business use, automation of metric calculation through use of technology, and generating sustainable funding for metric production.

Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity. It is therefore crucial to understand the outcomes of conservation actions. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 186 studies (including 665 trials) that measured biodiversity over time and compared outcomes under conservation action with a suitable counterfactual of no action. We find that in two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes. This provides the strongest evidence to date that conservation actions are successful but require transformational scaling up to meet global targets.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) was adopted on 15 December 2022 by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Framework states outcomes for species to be achieved by 2050 in Goal A and establishes a range of Targets to reduce pressures on biodiversity and halt biodiversity loss by 2030. Target 4 calls for urgent recovery actions for species where the implementation of other Targets is insufficient to eliminate the risk of extinction. To achieve the Framework’s Goals and Targets, key elements must be understood and the implications for implementation of agreed words and phrases made clear. We analyse the key species elements of Goal A and Target 4 and examine what they mean and what is needed for implementation. We conclude by considering next steps to identify priorities, support access and uptake of resources, and ensure co-operation and capacity development.

Human-induced direct mortality affects huge numbers of birds each year, threatening hundreds of species worldwide. Tracking technologies can be an important tool to investigate temporal and spatial patterns of bird mortality as well as their drivers. We compiled 1704 mortality records from tracking studies across the African-Eurasian flyway for 45 species, including raptors, storks, and cranes, covering the period from 2003 to 2021. Our results show a higher frequency of human-induced causes of mortality than natural causes across taxonomic groups, geographical areas, and age classes. Moreover, we found that the frequency of human-induced mortality remained stable over the study period. From the human-induced mortality events with a known cause (n = 637), three main causes were identified: electrocution (40.5 %), illegal killing (21.7 %), and poisoning (16.3 %). Additionally, combined energy infrastructure-related mortality (i.e., electrocution, power line collision, and wind-farm collision) represented 49 % of all human-induced mortality events. Using a random forest model, the main predictors of human-induced mortality were found to be taxonomic group, geographic location (latitude and longitude), and human footprint index value at the location of mortality. Despite conservation efforts, human drivers of bird mortality in the African-Eurasian flyway do not appear to have declined over the last 15 years for the studied group of species. Results suggest that stronger conservation actions to address these threats across the flyway can reduce their impacts on species. In particular, projected future development of energy infrastructure is a representative example where application of planning, operation, and mitigation measures can enhance bird conservation.