Re-assessment workshop of Threatened and Data Deficient African amphibians

[Simon Loader]

Dear All,

A reassessment workshop of Threatened and selected Data Deficient African amphibians was conducted following the AAWG meeting in Trento. The aim was to update the Threatened African amphibian assessments in the IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM (www.redlist.org), as the last comprehensive assessment for this region was carried out in 2001 in Watmu, Kenya. The assessment process has changed somewhat from the 2001 assessment, for further details please see the Amphibian Red List Authority Wiki site (http://amphibianrla.pbworks.com/w/page/29057098/Home%20page) or get in touch with Ariadne Angulo.

Over the course of the workshop a total of 165 amphibians were preliminarily assessed (if recently described) or re-assessed, 57 of them corresponding to West and Central African species and 108 corresponding to Eastern Afromontane species. In the case of reassessments, several changes have been proposed: for Eastern Afromontane species, there are 27 uplisting and 16 downlisting proposals, 12 changes in criteria but not category, and 11 calls for a Data Deficient assessment. A total of 42 assessments were maintained with the previous category/criteria combinations. For West and Central African species, there are two proposed uplistings, four downlistings, two changes in criteria but not category, and six proposals for Data Deficient. However, several assessments still require follow up and checking, and there may be more changes as a result of this. Should this happen we will circulate an email with the new proposed changes.

Once assessments are completed they will be sent for external review; if reviewers agree with the assessments they will then be submitted for consideration to be published on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In order to complete the assessments we would like to give experts who were not at the workshop the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft assessments before they are sent for review. To do this we suggest that you examine the attached excel sheet where you will see the currently proposed listing against the previous listing and the IUCN criteria used to justify these amendments (if any where made).

Please can you contact Ariadne Angulo (ariadne...@iucn.org) directly if you would like the full details of any species assessments in order to check the information. This will give you an opportunity to see the details behind the listing and provide any critical comments. We appreciate any feedback and you would be credited with providing any expert opinion on species assessments. Please let us know the species which you may want to provide feedback for by August 6th  2012.

I should also note that it is our intention to reassess all African amphibians (especially all the remaining Least Concern and Data Deficient species for which there are no new data that may merit a change in category) via the Amphibian Assessment Forum (http://www.amphibians.org/redlist/), and thereby be the first continent to re-assess all the amphibians since its first assessment in 2001 - so we would be leading the way! Further details of this will be sent shortly.

Best wishes,

Dr Simon Loader

--
Dr Simon Loader
Department of Environmental Sciences
Biogeography
University of Basel    
Klingelbergstr. 27   
CH-4056 Basel
Switzerland  

Tel:    ++41 61 267 07 23
e-mail: Simon....@unibas.ch
google e-mail: simon.p...@gmail.com
Homepage: http://www.biogeography.unibas.ch/loader
Personal Homepage: http://web.mac.com/simon.loader
Tanzanian Herps Homepage: http://www.tanzaniaherps.org/
Associate Editor, The Herpetological Journal
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bhs/thj
IUCN SSC Amphibian Specialist Group Regional Chair for East Africa

[Kim Howell]

Thanks so much Simon! It was a good effort and it will be great if we
can re-assss ALL African amphibians! Best wishes, Kim