The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the foremost authority on the conservation status of species. They evaluate data which allows them to assess a species' risk of extinction and then publish their findings on "The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species."
Most animals are classified as one of the following seven categories:
Least Concern (LC): "in terms of extinction risk, these species are of lesser concern than species in other threat categories" (IUCN Species Survival Commission).
Near Threatened (NT): "is close to qualifying for or is likely to qualify for a threatened category in the near future."
Vulnerable (VU): "considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild."
Endangered (EN): "considered to be facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild."
Critically Endangered (CR): "considered to be facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild."
Extinct in the Wild (EW): after exhaustive surveys "is known only to survive in cultivation, in captivity or as a naturalized population."
Extinct (EX): after exhaustive surveys "there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died."
Other taxa may be classified as Data Deficient (DD) or Not Evaluated (NE).
Here are the classifications for some of the animals we will see in the Pantanal:
Endangered (EN): Hyacinth Macaw
Vulnerable (VU): Giant Anteater; Tapir
Near Threatened (NT): Maned Wolf
Least Concern (LC): Capybara; Great Potoo; Toco Toucan; Crab-Eating Fox
(Many of the animals I tried searching have not yet been assessed by the IUCN but are classified on the Catalogue of Life, an "online database of the world's known species of animals, plants, fungi, and micro-organisms.")
~Megan Good
Sources:
http://jr.iucnredlist.org/documents/RedListGuidelines.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Status_iucn2.3.svg
http://www.iucnredlist.org/search
http://www.catalogueoflife.org
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