Launch of the Global Mammal Assessment and Partnership 07 March
2002 | News story Gland, Switzerland, 07.03.02. IUCN-The World
Conservation Union. In an effort to develop new ideas on
biodiversity assessment, using mammals as a test case, the IUCN
Species Survival Commission (SSC) has joined forces with several
other conservation organisations to form a Global Mammal
Assessment and Partnership. Mammals have long been a focus of
high-profile conservation efforts. Yet historically, the focus
has generally been on a relatively small number of larger
species, and mammals as a whole have not been used to their full
potential in establishing biodiversity conservation priorities.
To address this, the SSC is developing a Global Mammal
Assessment (GMA). The GMA will review the status of all species
of mammals (over 5,000 described species), focusing on mapping
geographic distributions, assessing the degree of threat, and
recording essential habitats and important threats for each
species. The data obtained will be ana