Global Species Programme

James Eaton/www.birdtourasia.com The recently described Calayan Rail has been listed as Vulnerable in the 2005 IUCN Red List, as it has a very small known range and population Zoom In

BirdLife International is the leading authority on the conservation of the world's birds. Through its Global Species Programme, BirdLife has collated, assessed and published information on the world's threatened birds for over 25 years.

Since the first compilation in the late 1970s, a series of detailed regional Red Data Books has been published, covering Africa (1985), the Americas (1992) and most recently, Asia (1999). Global checklists of all the world’s threatened birds were published as Birds to watch (1988), Birds to watch 2 (1994), Threatened birds of the world (2000), and Threatened birds of the world 2004 CD-ROM. The latter contained factsheets and additional data tables for all the world's birds, including, for the first time, all c.8,000 Least Concern species. All this information is also freely available through the Data Zone on the BirdLife website.

BirdLife collates information from a global network of experts and collaborating organisations and from publications and unpublished sources to assess each species's extinction risk, using the categories and criteria of the IUCN Red List.

Information on Globally Threatened Birds is used to focus global conservation efforts and to guide BirdLife's priorities for action. It is therefore essential that data on Globally Threatened Birds are kept up to date and regularly reviewed and revised.

BirdLife strives to continually update its information on Globally Threatened Birds. If you have new updates or corrections to information on any of the species factsheets, please email us. Contributors who supply information that is used will be explicitly acknowledged. Species factsheets are periodically updated and available through the Data Zone.

You can see which species are currently having their IUCN Red List category actively reviewed (for example, because of new information on population or range size and trends, or threats) by visiting the Globally Threatened Bird Forums, where you can contribute relevant information or comment.