What Does It Take to Write a Global Conservation Report? A New Assessment of Sharks Offers Answers

© John Turnbull (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Read this article featured on The Revelator with an interview from IUCN SSC SSG chair Rima Jabado on the Global status of sharks, rays, and chimaeras. This article discusses the importance of these animals, their conservation concern leading to the creation of this report, with notes on the process behind the scenes.

WRITTEN BY | Dr. David Shiffman
SOURCE | The Revelator

​In conservation reporting and advocacy, including mine, you’ll often see articles or experts cite statistics and figures that discuss the global state of groups of species like sharks, primates, orchids, or corals over years or decades.

Have you ever wondered, “how do scientists know that?”

A recent report from the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Shark Specialist Group offers some insight — not just on the global status of sharks (TL:DR — it’s bad) but on how researchers and conservationists come to understand how well other large groups of related but widely distributed species are faring in the modern world.

The report, “The global status of sharks, rays, and chimaeras,” is a staggering work of conservation science. It synthesizes everything we know about the current conservation status of over 1,000 species of these amazing animals, organized at both the global scale and by country and region. It took 353 shark science and conservation experts from 158 countries — all volunteers — nearly two years to write. It’s also a case where the “behind the scenes” story of how it was made tells us much about the current state of the field.

Read full article here