Conservation: assessing the path to species recovery

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 Biology and Ecology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Molly Grace, Task Force Co-Chair for the IUCN Green Status of Species. This new assessment tool focuses on evaluating species’ recovery rather than simply avoiding extinction, allowing conservationists to determine how well their efforts are working.

• This resource also contains an interview with Molly. If your students have questions for Molly, they can send them to her online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). Molly will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Molly’s research and challenges them to conduct Green Status assessments on a number of species.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources – or have suggestions for improvements –, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!