About Beastie Bot Species Status

What this site is

Beastie Bot Species Status is an unofficial website for looking up IUCN Red List assessments and citing them on English Wikipedia. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by IUCN. It is free and has no ads.

Each taxon on the IUCN Red List has a page with:

• the category, criteria and population trend of its latest global assessment, with the date assessed and the year published
• wikitext to copy into Wikipedia: a {{cite iucn}} citation, an {{IUCN status}} template, and the taxobox status parameters (status, status_system and status_ref), labelled with the taxobox the article most likely uses: {{Speciesbox}} for a species, {{Subspeciesbox}} for an animal subspecies, and {{Infraspeciesbox}} for a plant or fungus subspecies or a variety
• a {{cite Q}} citation of the assessment's Wikidata item, or QuickStatements commands to create that item
• for a species or subspecies, QuickStatements commands that bring the IUCN conservation status on its Wikidata item up to date
• its earlier global assessments, and its latest assessment in each region
• common names and synonyms
• links to the assessment on the IUCN Red List website, the English Wikipedia article, the Wikidata item and the Catalogue of Life page, and for Australian species the SPRAT profile and the listing under Australia's EPBC Act

Some taxa with no current assessment also have pages: old IUCN ids of taxa that now have another id, and taxa that IUCN no longer assesses. These pages show the taxon's earlier assessments, with wikitext for each.

The status update page updates the IUCN statuses in pasted wikitext ({{IUCN status}} templates, status columns in wikitables, and taxoboxes) to match the latest global assessments. It does not save the text.

Search matches scientific names, common names in any language, and synonyms.

Who runs this site

This site is run by an English Wikipedia editor who also runs the Wikipedia bot account Beastie Bot.

To report a wrong citation, a wrong link or another problem with this site, contact the person who runs this site. Include the address of the taxon page.

If a category or another detail is also wrong on the IUCN Red List website, the error is in IUCN's data. Report it to IUCN through the IUCN Red List website.

Data sources

This site reformats and combines the data from these sources.

Citations of the data sources

• GBIF: IUCN (2026). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2026-1. https://www.iucnredlist.org. Downloaded on 2026-07-28. https://doi.org/10.15468/0qnb58
• Catalogue of Life: Bánki, O., Roskov, Y., Döring, M., Ower, G., Hernández Robles, D. R., Plata Corredor, C. A., Stjernegaard Jeppesen, T., Örn, A., Pape, T., Hobern, D., Garnett, S., Little, H., DeWalt, R. E., Miller, J., Orrell, T., Aalbu, R., Abbott, J., Abreu, C., Acero P, A., et al. (2026). Catalogue of Life (2026-07-17 XR). Catalogue of Life Foundation, Amsterdam, Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.48580/dgykv
• SPRAT: Species Profile and Threats Database, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), Australian Government. https://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/sprat.pl

For the citation of the IUCN Red List, see IUCN Red List Terms of Use.

How the wikitext is made

Authors. IUCN gives the authors of an assessment as a single list, such as "Wiig, Ø., Amstrup, S. & Thiemann, G.". This site splits the list into one parameter for each author. About 1% of author names cannot be split with confidence. Those names are given exactly as IUCN wrote them, and a note under the citation asks you to check them.

DOI. The DOI comes from the first of these sources that has one:

1. IUCN's own citation text, which includes a DOI for about 12% of latest assessments
2. GBIF's copy of the IUCN checklist
3. Wikidata
4. Crossref's list of the DOIs IUCN has registered, and for recent assessments missing from it, possible DOIs checked at doi.org

A note under the citation says when the DOI came from GBIF, Wikidata, Crossref or doi.org, or when no DOI was found. {{cite iucn}} works without a DOI.

Access date. By default, |access-date= is the date this site downloaded the details of the assessment from the IUCN Red List API, between 16 November 2025 and 3 October 2026. If you check the assessment on the IUCN Red List website yourself, choose today's date. This site gives today's date in UTC. You can also leave the access date out.

Citation options. On each taxon page you can choose:

• the author format: |author=Surname, I. with |author2=, |author3= and so on, which most articles use, or |last1= and |first1=, which the {{cite iucn}} documentation shows
• whether to use the authors' full given names instead of initials. This option is shown when IUCN gives the full given names of at least one author of the assessment. By default, the names are written with initials, as in IUCN's citation.
• the access date: the date downloaded from IUCN (the default), today's date in UTC, or no access date
• whether to wrap the citation in <ref> tags, and the ref name. The default ref name is "iucn" for the latest global assessment, "iucn" and the year published for an earlier global assessment (such as "iucn2008"), and "iucn-" and the region for a regional assessment (such as "iucn-europe"), so citations of different assessments in one article have different names.
• whether to add |name-list-style=amp, which puts "&" before the last author, as IUCN does

The wikitext changes as soon as you change an option. In a browser without JavaScript, select Update wikitext to load the page with the new wikitext.

Citing through Wikidata. {{cite Q}} cites a work from the details stored in its Wikidata item. When this site's data has a Wikidata item for an assessment, the taxon page gives {{cite Q}} wikitext for that item, with the same ref options as {{cite iucn}}. It has an access date only when the item has a URL for the assessment, because {{cite Q}} reports an error for an access date without a URL. If the item is missing statements that this site can supply, such as the DOI or the authors, the page also gives QuickStatements commands that add them. When this site's data has no item for the assessment, the page gives QuickStatements commands that create one like the assessment items already on Wikidata: a scholarly article published in the IUCN Red List, usually with the taxon's Wikidata item as its main subject (P921). The commands that create an item and the commands that add missing statements both leave out main subject (P921) when two or more Wikidata items have the taxon's IUCN taxon ID (P627), or when the taxon's item has that ID only at deprecated rank. In both cases you should first check which item is the taxon's, and the taxon page says why main subject (P921) was left out.

Titles and labels of assessment items. Most assessment items on Wikidata have a title and English label of the form “Name: authors”, and {{cite Q}} shows the title as the title of the work. So the commands for an item take the authors out of its title and give it an English label such as “Batrachuperus karlschmidti. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2004: e.T59083A11867696”. The page lists each title and label that the commands replace, beside the new one. The title, label and English description that the commands write contain a scientific name, which this site takes from the first of these it has: the name in the item's title (P1476), when the item has exactly one title that is not deprecated; the name in the title registered with Crossref for the assessment's DOI; or the name in IUCN's citation. IUCN's citation gives the taxon's current name, even for an older assessment: for the 2014 assessment of the black-backed jackal, the item's title “Canis mesomelas: Hoffmann, M” becomes “Canis mesomelas”, though IUCN's citation now gives Lupulella mesomelas. The page says when the name in the item's title or in the title registered with Crossref is different from IUCN's citation name, and when the commands use IUCN's citation name because this site has neither title. An errata version that has the same DOI as the assessment it corrects shares that assessment's item, and the commands for the item are on that assessment's page.

IUCN conservation status on Wikidata. For the latest global assessment of a species or subspecies whose Wikidata item states its IUCN taxon ID (P627), the taxon page compares the item's IUCN conservation status (P141) with the assessment and gives QuickStatements commands that bring it up to date. Only statements with a reference to IUCN are compared, and the commands never remove the others. The commands add the status with a reference to the assessment: its Wikidata item when this site's data has one, the IUCN taxon ID, the assessment's page, and the date this site downloaded the assessment. A statement that already has a reference with the taxon's IUCN taxon ID gets no second reference. When Wikidata gives a different status, the page gives two sets of commands. One keeps the old status, as items with a statement at preferred rank do; QuickStatements cannot set ranks, so you then set the ranks on the item's page. The other removes the old status, and is shown first when none of the item's statements has preferred rank. No commands are given when the IUCN taxon ID is on more than one Wikidata item, or is on the item only at deprecated rank, because which item is the taxon's needs checking first. Wikidata has no IUCN conservation status value for Lower Risk/conservation dependent (LR/cd), so taxa in that category get no commands.

QuickStatements makes the edits with your own Wikidata account. This site never edits Wikidata.

English Wikipedia's guidance on {{cite Q}}: check every detail that it takes from Wikidata, and don't use it in an article whose citations mostly give authors as “Last, First” or in Vancouver style. See Wikipedia:Citing sources.

Earlier assessments. To cite an earlier assessment, select Show wikitext in its row of the Assessment history table. The page then shows the wikitext for that assessment and says which assessment it is. In a Combined assessment history table, a row of another IUCN id links to that id's page instead.

Old IUCN ids. An old IUCN id has no assessment in the current Red List version. This site links it to a taxon in that version with the same scientific name, or to the only taxon in the same kingdom whose IUCN synonyms include the old id's name. The old id's page and the taxon's page then show a Combined assessment history: the global assessments of all the linked ids in one table. Regional assessments stay on each id's own page. This site does not say why the id changed, but links to IUCN's taxonomic notes when an id's newest assessment has them.

IUCN Red List Terms of Use

The IUCN Red List data on this site is used under the IUCN Red List Terms of Use and remains subject to those terms.

Cite the IUCN Red List as: IUCN 2026. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2026-1. https://www.iucnredlist.org

The terms do not allow IUCN data to be redistributed, so this site has no downloads.

Full assessments and data downloads

Each taxon page on this site shows a summary of the assessment. The full assessment, including the rationale, threats and conservation actions, is on the IUCN Red List website at https://www.iucnredlist.org. Each taxon page links to its assessment there.

To download IUCN Red List data, use the IUCN Red List website. Downloads there need an account and are subject to IUCN's terms.