Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric

What the tool does

STAR assesses the potential of specific actions at specific locations to contribute to global sustainability targets, and so supports science-based targets for species biodiversity. The delivery of the sum total of such targets would reduce extinction risk to natural levels.

STAR measures the potential contribution of two kinds of action to reduce species extinction risk:

• threat abatement
• habitat restoration 

This makes it possible to identify actions that will yield benefits for threatened species, and permits actors to add up their total contributions to preventing biodiversity loss.

How it works

STAR is calculated from data on the distribution, threats, and extinction risk of threatened species derived, for example, from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species^TM.

Distribution is measured as a given species’ current area of habitat (for threat abatement) and historically lost area of habitat (for restoration). Threats are documented using the standard Threats Classification Scheme. Extinction risk is measured using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria.

The resulting metric can then be reported for any geographic unit (e.g. a site, landscape, portfolio, country), and is wholly scalable and comparable across space.

Photo: IUCN

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Who uses it

Governments, businesses, civil society, or any other actor can use STAR to quantify the potential impact of their actions on reducing species extinction risk.

National governments can use it to set baselines for measuring progress towards global biodiversity targets including the Nature 2030 IUCN Programme, the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and Sustainable Development Goal 15. Conservation agencies can use it to identify gaps and target conservation efforts. The private and financial sectors can use STAR to document and disclose biodiversity risk.

Scientific underpinning and approach

The scientific basis for STAR was established by Mair et al. Measuring spatially-explicit contributions to science-based species targets. The metric bases its scores on data from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the global standard for the assessment of extinction risk. Further research is underway to extend application of STAR to aquatic environments, to account for threats embodied in international trade, and to harness National Red List data for nationally threatened species.

Agile gibbon Photo: Julielangford, CC BY-SA 3.0

Contributing organisations

The IUCN Species Survival Commission post-2020 Taskforce, hosted by the University of Newcastle, led the development of STAR. Collaborators from more than 50 organisations around the world contributed to the manuscript that established the science underpinning it. The STAR tool will be available through the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT), a partnership of IUCN, BirdLife International, Conservation International, and UNEP-WCMC. The Luc Hoffmann Institute, Vulcan Inc, Synchronicity Earth, Global Environment Facility, and the Conservation International GEF Project Agency provided support to its development. The Biodiversity Consultancy pioneered the tool’s private sector applications.

IUCN’s role and contributions

The method for calculating STAR is in the public domain, and can be applied by any actor anywhere, using data on the distribution, threats, and extinction risk of threatened species. For most applications, the immediate source of such data is the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and so the maintenance of the global STAR metric is maintained under the authority of the IUCN Red List Committee. IUCN is also one of the four IBAT partner institutions, where the tool for the application of STAR is maintained.