PHOTO(S): © Beau Wrigley
Iconic species is a component of the Sense of Place goal which aims to capture how well we are protecting the local coastal and marine systems that we value as part of our cultural identity. For the iconic species subgoal, a score of 100 means that all the culturally important marine species in a region are doing well.
This sub-goal assesses the condition of local marine species that are iconic to a region.
Data for this goal will likely have considerable overlap with Biodiversity sub-goal: Species. Calculating Biodiversity and Sense of Place scores should be a collaborative effort.
STEP 1: Determine iconic species
First you need to identify the iconic species located in each region. These species may be valued because of their role in: 1) traditional activities such as fishing, hunting or commerce; 2) local ethnic or religious practices; 3) existence value; and 4) locally-recognized aesthetic value (e.g., touristic attractions/common subjects for art such as whales).
Habitat-forming species are not included in this definition nor are species that are harvested solely for economic or utilitarian purposes (even though they may be iconic to a sector or individual).
In practice, Iconic Species are usually a subset of the broader list of species in an area, and so you should be able to find Iconic Species after having found assessed species data for the Species sub-goal of the Biodiversity goal (see Biodiversity for more details). Once you have the full list of assessed species you can determine a subset for Iconic Species. For instance, are there species that are culturally held as valuable? Do any species appear on the currency or postage stamps?
Defining which species are iconic can be challenging, especially because different species can be iconic to different groups within the same region. It might be helpful to elicit information from experts on local customs and tradition.
Ultimately, almost any species can be iconic to someone, but the intent of this goal is to focus on those species widely seen as iconic within a country, and iconic from a cultural or existence value (rather than for a livelihoods or extractive reason). Many lists exist for globally important, threatened, and endemic species, but the extent these species represent regionally iconic species is unclear. For the global assessment, species were drawn from the World Wildlife Fund’s global and regional lists for Priority Species (especially important to people for their health, livelihoods, and/or culture) and Flagship Species (‘charismatic’ and/or well-known).
STEP 2: Assess condition
For the global assessment, the health of each iconic species was based on its extinction risk from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). IUCN provides global species assessments that describe the distribution and the conservation status of species, ranging from Least Concern to Critically Endangered to Extinct.
Beyond extinction risk, there are many metrics that can be used to assess species health, such as the stability of their populations.
Keep in mind that regional assessments of species condition are usually more accurate than large global assessments (such as the IUCN), and are thus preferred data sources. A good compromise might be to use local data when available and gapfill missing data with global assessments.
Species status data must then be converted to values between 0 to 1, with 1 indicating low risk, low vulnerability, high health. The reference point will be all iconic species having a healthy level of existence.
STEP 3: Calculate final score
The species’ status scores in each region will need to be combined. The global assessment simply averages the species status scores within each region. However, it might be worth weighting by some variable such as its iconic status.
| Assessment | Developing the Model | Setting the Reference Point | Other Considerations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global 2012 | The status was the average extinction risk of iconic species, calculated as the weighted sum of the number of species in each threat category. An increasing weight was assigned by level of extinction risk of the threat category. A list of region-specific iconic species was combined with a list of globally-recognized iconic species from the World Wildlife Fund’s global and regional lists for Priority Species and Flagship Species. | The reference point is to have the risk status as Least Concern. | The lists used were the only source that included cultural reasons for listing iconic species but they only cover a few regions and by no means capture the rich diversity of species that are iconic for local regions. |
| Global 2013 - 2015 | The method was the same as Global 2012. | The reference point was the same as Global 2012. | The approach was the same as Global 2012. |
| Brazil 2014 | The method was the same as Global 2012. | The reference point was the same as Global 2012. | The approach was the same as Global 2012. |
| U.S. West Coast 2014 | This study replaced the global IUCN risk assessments with regionally-specific species assessments provided by NatureServe. | The reference point was the same as Global 2012. | Same as Global 2012, with regional data for the threat categories. |
| Israel 2014 | See Global 2012. | The target reference point here is that all species are assessed as “Secure”, giving a goal score of 1. | The IUCN species assessments were used for the calculation of the biodiversity. |
| Ecuador - Gulf of Guayaquil 2015 | The same approach as Global 2012 assessment was used. | The reference point was where all Iconic spices are categorized as “least concern”. | Updated with local from IUCN with iconic species of the Golfo de Guayaquil. Three species from the global study were eliminated and 13 new ones were included. |
| China 2015 | Status model is similar to global assessments. However, average extinction risk of all assessed species was only calculated as the weighted sum of the number of species in each threat category, since habitat area per species is not obtainable. | The reference point was the same as Global 2012. | N/A |