Geographic range is a key benchmark in assigning a species a threat level in IUCN’s Red List. We found that there are areas such as townships within these BLI range maps, where some of these birds definitely do not occur in,” he said by email. Their study, in fact, questions the IUCN model for calculating extent of occurrence, saying it relies heavily on the accuracy of range maps. IUCN’s Sinha referred to an earlier study that had relied on geospatial data, like Ramesh and his team did. That had been published in Science Advances, after which IUCN Red List had issued a statement that the assessment was incorrect.

Source: Indian Express May 02, 2017 18:45 UTC