EXTINCTION CLOCK · METHODOLOGY V2

Planetary urgency, made legible

A transparent view of the conservation profiles monitored by SpeciesWatch — their risk categories, population direction and recent metric history.

Extinction Clock

Current urgency index

55/ 100

Elevated weighted concentration

The SpeciesWatch Extinction Clock is an editorial urgency index, not a countdown. Its 0–100 score uses equal ordinal category steps inspired by the IUCN Red List Index; a higher value means that more of this curated collection is concentrated in higher-risk categories.

Threatened categories make a substantial contribution to the weighted catalogue score.

Curated profiles

Threatened profiles (CR/EN/VU)

Populations decreasing

Populations increasing

Risk-category distribution

Tracked threatened total

Latest 25 daily snapshots available

How the clock is calculated

Methodology V2 uses equal ordinal steps inspired by the IUCN Red List Index: LC 0, NT 1, VU 2, EN 3, CR 4, and EW/EX 5. Data Deficient profiles are excluded from both the weighted sum and denominator. The sum is divided by the maximum possible score for the included profiles and expressed from 0 to 100.

This is an RLI-inspired editorial snapshot, not the official IUCN Red List Index, a species-level assessment or a forecast. The five display bands describe only the weighted composition of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue; they do not assign biological traits or extinction probabilities to individual species.

Key categories: Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU).

From categories to a transparent signal

Conservation categories support careful assessment, not a single scoreboard. This dashboard compresses the curated collection into a readable signal while keeping its formula and limitations visible.

Why weighting changes the picture

A simple count treats Least Concern and Critically Endangered profiles equally. The urgency index gives larger weights near extinction, so a collection concentrated in CR, EW or EX produces a stronger signal.

The equal-step weights follow the ordinal pattern used by the Red List Index, but SpeciesWatch does not meet the requirements for an official RLI time series. Publishing the formula, exclusions and version makes this editorial snapshot inspectable.

What a short history can show

Daily snapshots record the catalogue state. A change may reflect a revised assessment, newly curated profile or correction; it should not automatically be read as a population change that happened overnight.

Longer series can audit how the monitored collection evolves. Until enough dates accumulate, individual values and category distributions carry more information than the line itself.