Red-listed Odonata of Africa

The Red-Listed African Odon. spp. are re-assessed and are assigned or re-assigned to the IUCN Categories of Threat. It is important to distinguish between those species that are simply rare, those that are ‘Data Deficient’ and those that are genuinely threatened. It is also important to consider the ‘Extinct’ category very carefully as premature inclusion of a taxon in this category can preclude further searches for it. The IUCN Categories of Threat were found to be very workable for the African Odon. Problems are more to do with the practicalities of doing the field assessments, rather than with the categorisation itself. While the Red List is of enormous value when considering one species at a time, it should not be seen as a generalized data base amenable to comparative assemblage statistics, which are likely to reveal more on assessment efforts than on the organisms.