European Red List of Grasshoppers, Crickets and Bush-crickets

The European Red List is a review of the conservation status of European species according to IUCN regional Red Listing guidelines. It identifies those species that are threatened with extinction at the regional level, so that appropriate conservation action can be taken to improve their status. This Red List publication summarises results for all hitherto described native European Orthoptera species (grasshoppers, crickets and bush-crickets). All Orthoptera species (grasshoppers, crickets and bushcrickets) native to or naturalised in Europe before AD 1500 (a total of 1,082 species), have been assessed in this Red List. The geographical scope is continent-wide, extending from Iceland in the west to the Urals in the east, and from Franz Josef Land in the north to the Canary Islands in the south. The Caucasus region is not included. Red List assessments were made at two regional levels: for geographical Europe, and for the 28 Member States of the European Union in 2016. The status of all species was assessed using the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria (IUCN 2012a), which is the world’s most widely accepted system for measuring extinction risk. All assessments followed the Guidelines for Application of IUCN Red List Criteria at Regional and National Levels (IUCN 2012b). The assessments were compiled based on the data and knowledge from a network of leading European experts on Orthoptera. The assessments were then completed and reviewed at six workshops held in Italy, Greece, France, Bulgaria, Spain and Germany as well as through email correspondence with relevant experts. More than 145 experts participated in the assessment and review process for European Orthoptera species. Assessments are available on the European Red List website and data portal: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/ conservation/species/redlist and http://www.iucnredlist. org/initiatives/europe. Overall, 25.7% and 28% of Orthoptera species are assessed as threatened at the European and EU 28 levels, respectively. However, the exact proportion of threatened species is uncertain, as there are 107 (10%) Data Deficient (DD) species in Europe and 84 DD species (8.5%) in the EU 28. Estimating that a similar relative proportion of the DD assessments are likely to be threatened (IUCN 2011), the best estimate of the threatened share of Orthoptera species is thus 28.5% in Europe and 30.6% in the EU 28. Further research on DD species to clarify their status is therefore critical. A further 13.9% (149 species) and 13% (128 species) are considered Near Threatened in Europe and in the EU 28, respectively. By comparison, the best estimate of threatened species of those other groups that have been assessed comprehensively in Europe is 58% of freshwater molluscs, 40% of freshwater fishes, 23% of amphibians, 20% of reptiles, 17% of mammals, 16% of dragonflies, 13% of birds, 9% of butterflies and bees, 8% of aquatic plants and marine fishes and 2% of medicinal plants (IUCN 2015). Additional European Red Lists assessing a selection of species showed that 22% of terrestrial molluscs, 16% of crop wild relatives and 15% of saproxylic beetles are also threatened (IUCN 2015). No other groups have yet been assessed at the European level. Looking at the population trends of European Orthoptera species, 30.2% (325 species) have declining populations, 7.6% (82 species) are believed to be more or less stable and 3.2% (34 species) are increasing. However, the population trends for the majority of species (59%, 634 species) remain unknown. Out of the 739 species that are endemic to Europe (i.e., they are found nowhere else in the world), 231 (31.3%) are threatened, highlighting the responsibility that European countries hav