Number of threatened and extinct species in The Netherlands, by 2024

Assembling Red Lists

Species decreasing in population size and/or in distribution range and species that have gone extinct are placed on the Red List. The Dutch Red Lists may be regarded as a national application of the IUCN Red List (IUCN 2008), but follow their own protocol. Red Lists are assembled approximately every ten years for a number of species groups, based on the Red List status per species. As a species continues to decline and becomes increasingly rare, it is assigned a more severe Red List threat category. The following threat categories are distinguished: least concern, near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct (in this context meaning ‘extinct in The Netherlands’), and data deficient.   

To date, official Red Lists of 19 species groups (pertaining to fish only for freshwater fish) have been compiled. The Red list status of each evaluated species is published in the Dutch Government Gazette. For most of these 19 species groups, the Red List status of each species of native and established species in The Netherlands, for which there is enough data, has been revised and published in the Government Gazette for a second time, resulting in updated Red Lists. Only species that have procreated for at least ten consecutive years in The Netherlands are considered. Sources (below) lists the proposals for the Red Lists (most with an English summary) and the announcements in the Dutch Government Gazette. 

The Red List Stoneflies has been assembled for the first time in 2024 and published in the Dutch Government Gazette in October 2024. The Red Lists Amphibians and Reptiles were most recently revised. At the end of 2023 RAVON (Reptiles Amphibians Fish Research Netherlands) assembled the proposal Red List (both species groups in the same proposal list) and in October 2024 the species were published in the Dutch Government Gazette.

Threatened and extinct species

In each of the 19 species groups, at least one third of the species are listed in the Red List with a threatened or extinct status. In some species groups the ratio is much higher. For reptiles it pertains to 5 out of 7 species (71%); for butterflies 47 out of 76 species (62%); for stoneflies 19 out of 33 (58%); for bees 181 out of 331 (55%); for lichens 389 out of 727 (54%), and for bryophytes 246 out of 517 (48%; see table under Download data).

In the species groups butterflies, stoneflies, bees and mayflies the proportion of species that have gone extinct in The Netherlands is relatively high. Many threatened species are not protected by law. 

Trend of Red List species

Periodical revisions of Red Lists make it possible to derive trends in the numbers of threatened and extinct species over time. However, with a revision frequency of approximately ten years, such trends do not reflect the actual situation in the years between revisions. By constructing “virtual” Red Lists in the years between official Red List publications, it is possible to calculate the trend in the number of threatened species on a yearly basis (see the Red List Indicator).

Red List Indicator