The UK Priority Species Indicator Initiative, charting the changing status of priority species across nature

Project objectives
Progress so far
Work planned or underway
Results
Species affected (not UK birds)
Who to contact
Partners

In order to assess our progress towards national and international biodiversity targets, and to improve species’ conservation prospects, we need a robust system of monitoring, analysis and reporting for priority species in the UK (and individual countries). The current UK priority species indicator was last updated in 2008, and since then no coordinated reporting has taken place. Additionally, there were methodological and presentational problems with this indicator.

To address this gap RSPB, alongside JNCC, has initiated a partnership of organisations to develop a new biodiversity indicator describing the changing status of priority species in the UK (and individual countries).

It is hoped that the indicator will serve a range of purposes, including, highlighting emerging problems for species and groups and recognising conservation successes, allowing the efficacy of conservation interventions to be assessed at a country level and raising the profile of lesser known taxonomic groups.

Project objectives

Build a partnership of nature conservation organisations and statutory agencies
Define a priority species list
Review of the quantity and quality of data currently available for each species on the list
Prioritise groups for additional or improved monitoring
Explore and test different ways to construct an indicator using the variety of data types available, for example, species abundance or species range
Develop reporting and data collation protocols
Publish a draft indicator in Spring 2013

Key dates so far

In March 2012, we led a workshop where more than 30 experts attended from both the NGO and statutory sectors.
Presentations and discussion sessions covered topics such as, the importance of indicators, governmental aims and priorities, data availability, improvements to monitoring and reporting, recent statistical advances, and options for indicator creation.
The groups shown below have agreed to contribute towards this project.

Work planned or underway

We aim to have the indicator ready for publication in Spring 2013 as a draft version. Following from this we envisage updating the indicator in 2014, 2017 and 2020 to meet reporting requirements for the Convention on Biological Diversity. For a subset of species it may be possible to update the indicator annually.