From Surviving to Thriving: Inside the IUCN Green Status of Species

In this episode Elizabeth Bock speaks with Dr Molly Grace (University of Oxford), co-chair of the IUCN Green Status of Species working group. The conversation explains how the Green Status complements the Red List by measuring species recovery, not just extinction risk. Molly unpacks the three components of recovery (distribution, viability, functionality), explains how the assessment quantifies the impact of conservation actions, and outlines how the Green Status can be used for national reporting under the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Key takeaways

• The Green Status answers a question the Red List does not: what does recovery look like, and how much has conservation achieved so far.
• Recovery is measured using three components: distribution (pre-impact vs current range), viability (extinction risk), and functionality (ability to perform ecological roles).
• The assessment includes a counterfactual element: it estimates what recovery would look like without past conservation, making conservation impact visible.
• Baselines matter and are contested; the Green Status uses a pre-impact baseline within the past 500 years to allow standardised comparison.
• Early priorities include improving taxonomic coverage (beyond charismatic vertebrates) and piloting national reporting with countries such as Indonesia and South Africa.

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Transcript

00:00:10 Elizabeth Bock
Welcome to the Nature Recovery Podcast. We’re going to take a closer look at some of the solutions to counter biodiversity decline, and we’ll find out more about the people behind these ideas.

00:00:28 Elizabeth Bock
Hello everyone. I’m here today with Dr Molly Grace. She is a conservation biologist and ecologist at the University of Oxford, whose research aims to understand species recovery and its drivers. She is also co-chair of the Green Status of Species Working Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. This working group developed and is responsible for delivering the IUCN Green Status of Species, a new part of the IUCN Red List which provides a standardised way to measure species recovery and conservation impact. In addition to being a senior departmental lecturer, she is also the programme director for my master’s course, the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Nature Recovery. Welcome to the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery podcast, Dr Grace.

00:01:12 Molly Grace
It’s so nice to be here. Thank you, Elizabeth.

00:01:15 Elizabeth Bock
Just to start off, would you give our listeners an overview of what designations the IUCN currently assigns species and ecosystems?

00:01:23 Molly Grace
Absolutely. The IUCN is the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which our listeners may or may not be familiar with. IUCN is the world’s authority on the state of nature and the measures needed to safeguard it, and it takes on this role by splitting that workload across a number of different commissions. The commissions we’re probably interested in today are the Species Survival Commission and the Commission on Ecosystems Management. These are the two IUCN commissions that look at the conservation status of species and ecosystems. I’m a member of both of them.

The main way these two commissions have thought about species and ecosystem status for a long time is through risk of extinction, or risk of collapse in the case of ecosystems. Within the Species Survival Commission, we have the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This is our way of classifying the extinction risk of species of animals, plants and fungi across the world. It looks at red flags such as population decline and shrinking geographic distribution. Based on those warning signs, species are assigned levels of extinction risk, from Least Concern through to threatened categories such as Endangered.

For ecosystems, we also have a Red List of Ecosystems, which fewer people know about. It uses a very similar approach to assess the risk of ecosystem collapse. The Red List of Threatened Species came first and has guided our thinking for decades, and the Red List of Ecosystems followed that same logic for ecosystems.

00:03:38 Elizabeth Bock
Your speciality is the Green Status of Species, which doesn’t even have the word “red” in it. It’s a recently established IUCN metric. How is it different from these other Red List measures, and what is the intention behind it? Why is it necessary?

00:03:54 Molly Grace
We’ve had Red Lists guiding our thinking for a long time, and they’ve been incredibly important because the first goal of conservation is to prevent extinction or ecosystem collapse. But IUCN recognised over a decade ago that worrying about extinction risk is only the first step. Once you’ve prevented extinction, where do you go next? If you want to recover a species that is no longer at risk, what does recovery actually mean?

There was no agreed definition of a recovered species or ecosystem, because we’d focused on extinction prevention for so long. The Green Status of Species is a new IUCN framework that looks at recovery status rather than just extinction risk.

We assess recovery using three components: distribution, viability and functionality. Distribution looks at where a species occurs today compared to where it occurred prior to major human impacts. Viability ties into the Red List by considering extinction risk. Functionality goes beyond survival to ask whether there are enough individuals, with the right characteristics, to perform the species’ ecological roles. We don’t just want species to survive, we want them to thrive and fulfil their ecological functions.

00:06:33 Elizabeth Bock
It seems like a lot of work for a lot of people. For the Green Status of Species, what do you think is the most significant positive impact it’s had for conservation?

00:06:54 Molly Grace
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that the Green Status doesn’t just assess recovery, it also allows us to measure the impact of conservation actions. We can ask: if we hadn’t done any conservation, what would the recovery status look like today?

For most species assessed so far, recovery would be much lower without conservation. That’s powerful, because many species have remained Endangered for decades, and people might conclude that conservation hasn’t worked. The Green Status lets us show that conservation has prevented worse outcomes and given us a pathway towards recovery.

00:08:44 Elizabeth Bock
When the Green Status was conceptualised, what was the process of defining criteria like range, functionality and human impact?

00:09:00 Molly Grace
It was a very long process. The idea emerged in 2012, and for several years there were international discussions among scientists in the Species Survival Commission about how to measure recovery. Viability, functionality and distribution emerged as key components.

In 2016, a dedicated IUCN task force was set up to operationalise these ideas. About 30 researchers from around the world worked together, testing the framework across different taxa by consulting species experts. We asked whether the definitions worked for mosses, fish, elephants, and so on. The result is guidance that mostly works across animals, plants and fungi, though it continues to evolve as we learn more.

00:12:38 Elizabeth Bock
What criticisms has the Green Status received, and which do you think have merit?

00:12:46 Molly Grace
One recurring criticism concerns the use of pre-impact distributions as a baseline. Ecosystems aren’t static, and species move. Why anchor recovery to a fixed point in the past?

Scientifically, that’s a valid point. Pragmatically, if you want to define recovery, you need something to recover to. We chose a baseline within the past 500 years before major human impacts. It’s not perfect, but it allows standardisation and comparison across species.

00:14:37 Elizabeth Bock
How do you reconstruct past distributions when data are limited?

00:14:50 Molly Grace
Data limitations are a challenge, but there are creative solutions. We collaborate with historians, art historians and historical ecologists, using non-scientific records such as land ownership documents that mention species. We also use palaeobiology and species distribution modelling to combine environmental data with occurrence records to infer past ranges.

00:17:16 Elizabeth Bock
Is there a bias in which species get assessed, favouring charismatic species?

00:17:37 Molly Grace
Yes, there is. The Red List has historically focused more on vertebrates, especially mammals and birds. Plants, fungi, insects and fishes are under-represented. With the Green Status, we’re trying to address this early by developing a sampled index that represents all major taxonomic groups.

00:19:56 Elizabeth Bock
What’s next for the Green Status of Species?

00:20:00 Molly Grace
We’re working with countries under the Convention on Biological Diversity, particularly Target 4 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, which focuses on preventing extinction and promoting recovery. The Green Status is one of the indicators for that target. We’re piloting this with Indonesia and South Africa and hope to scale it up.

00:21:34 Elizabeth Bock
What’s your most optimistic vision for a world where the Green Status works?

00:21:51 Molly Grace
I’d like recovery to become a shared goal, not just extinction prevention. One exciting aspect is thinking about maximum possible recovery: what could be achieved within a century if everything went right, given biological and global constraints? That kind of ambition opens up new possibilities for conservation.

00:24:06 Elizabeth Bock
Why did you choose to work on the Green Status, and what excites you most about it?

00:24:14 Molly Grace
I’ve always been interested in ecological functionality as a conservation goal. What excites me most is that we now have a global definition of recovery. If you don’t have a concept for something, it can’t be a goal. The Green Status gives us something concrete to aim for.

00:25:32 Elizabeth Bock
Thank you so much for joining us.

00:25:38 Molly Grace
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

00:25:46 Elizabeth Bock
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