IUCN's January Focus e-newsletter discusses priorities in view of its upcoming Congress in Jeju, Korea, including the need to value and conserve biodiversity.
It also highlights the role of the Red List in influencing policies, and the recent discovery of a new population of pygmy hippos in Sierra Leone.
January 2012: The January issue of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) monthly “Focus” e-newsletter takes the theme “Biodiversity up front,” and highlights the upcoming IUCN Congress in Jeju, Korea, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and new species discoveries, among other topics.
The January issue notes that the IUCN Congress provides a forum for the knowledge and tools that IUCN uses to establish and sustainably manage protected areas, such as the Best Practice Guidelines on Protected Areas.
Also according to the January issue, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a critical tool for providing the information needed to guide conservation action from the local to global level. In particular, this issue of Monthly Focus highlights the need for more marine species assessments, given their role in influencing policies such as regional fisheries agreements and trade rules such as those under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
This issue also reports on the discovery, in December 2010, of a new population of pygmy hippos in the waterways at the foot of Loma Mountain, northern Sierra Leone, and how former hunters have been hired from the local village to work on the project, providing them with an alternative income to hunting. [Publication: IUCN Monthly Focus – January]