Indices that investigate species conservation by country can be difficult to develop. This is partly due to the fact that for countries with larger natural endowments, there are greater conservation burdens both in terms of absolute numbers and percentages of total species to protect. Moreover, species are assessed as threatened on the basis of their global conservation status. This means that even if a country takes extensive measures to protect a species in its own territory, it might still rank poorly on an index that looks at the percentage of globally endangered species. This indicator is designed to give a more rigorous insight into the protection of highly endangered species on an international level. It catalogs whether countries provide critical habitat protection for species identified as endangered by the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE).
The Alliance for Zero Extinction is a joint initiative of 52 biodiversity conservation organizations. It aims to prevent extinctions by identifying and safeguarding key sites selected as the remaining refuges of one or more Endangered or Critically Endangered species, as identified by the IUCN Red List criteria. The IUCN standard provides a consistent approach for AZE site designation across the world. Because of the rigorous criteria used to assign AZE sites, this indicator provides a good measure of how many gravely endangered species are receiving immediate conservation protection. Our target is the protection of 100% of sites, with the justification that there are a finite number of sites and the species in question are highly endangered. Countries with no AZE sites on their territories have scores averaged around this indicator.
