Programme Green Status of Species assessment resources

Molly Grace

Background

Molly joined ICCS as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow in October 2017. She is the Coordinator of the Species Conservation Success Task Force of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. This Task Force is responsible for developing and delivering the new Green List of Species, which will provide a standardised way to measure conservation success and account for the positive impacts of conservation. Currently, conservation success is measured in terms of the outcome we wish to avoid (extinction) rather than the outcome we wish to achieve: the recovery of populations carrying out their ecological roles throughout their indigenous range. Her position is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (supporting Molly as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow), IUCN, Global Wildlife Conservation, and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Collaborative Fund.

Previously, Molly's research focus was in road ecology, specifically the effects of roads on behaviour of wildlife and humans. She pursued this interest at Duke University (working with Steve Nowicki and Rindy Anderson studying how traffic noise affects songbird communication) and at the University of Central Florida (working with Reed Noss to explore how traffic noise affects amphibian behaviour, and how best to prevent collisions between vehicles and large animals).

Research Interests

Conservation ecology, species recovery, impact evaluation, knowledge exchange.

Current Research

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Dr Molly Grace is a Lecturer in Ecology and Conservation based in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. She is also a member of Pembroke College. Her research focuses on assessing species recovery, specifically the development and application of the IUCN Green Status of Species; in this role, she Co-Chairs the IUCN Green Status of Species Working Group and is a member of the Red List Scientific Committee. A new research collaboration with Brisbane-based Accounting for Nature focuses on environmental accounting attributing impact to conservation activities, particularly in the context of biodiversity credits. Both of these research areas delve into how historical ecology and palaeoecology can inform conservation.

 

Published Papers

Featured publications (for a full list, see Molly’s Google Scholar profile):

McClenachan, L., Rick, T., Thurstan, R. H., Trant, A., Alagona, P. S., Alleway, H. K., …Grace, MK & Van Houtan, K. S. (2024). Global research priorities for historical ecology to inform conservation. Endangered Species Research . 54: 285–310. https://doi.org/10.3354/esr01338

Grace, M. 2023. Assessing Species Conservation Status: The IUCN Red List and Green Status of Species. In: Maclean, N (Ed.) The Living Planet: The Present State of the World’s Wildlife. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Pierce, SJ, M Grace, G Araujo. 2021. Conservation of Whale Sharks

Grace, M, HR Akçakaya, J Bull, C Carrero, K Davies, S Hedges, M Hoffmann, B Long, EM Nic Lughadha, GM Martin, F Pilkington, MC Rivers, RP Young, EJ Milner-Gulland. 2021. Building robust, practicable counterfactuals and scenarios to infer the impact of species conservation interventions. Biological Conservation 261: 109259.

Grace, M et al. (203 coauthors). 2021. Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact. Conservation Biology 35(6): 1833-1849.

Akçakaya, HR, A Rodrigues, D Keith, EJ Milner-Gulland, EW Sanderson, S Hedges,

D Mallon, M Grace, B Long, E Meijaard, PJ Stephenson. 2020. Assessing Ecological Function in the Context of Species Recovery. Conservation Biology 34(3): 561-571.

Grace, M, HR Akçakaya, E Bennett, C Hilton-Taylor, B Long, EJ Milner-Gulland, R Young, M Hoffmann. 2019. Using historical and paleoecological data to inform ambitious species  recovery targets. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 374: 20190297.

Akcakaya, R, E Bennett, T Brooks, M Grace, A Heath, S Hedges, C Hilton-Taylor, M Hoffmann, D Keith, B Long, DP Mallon, EJ Milner-Gulland, ASL Rodrigues, JP Rodriguez, PJ Stephenson, S Stuart, R Young. 2018. Quantifying Species Recovery and Conservation  Success: a practical framework for expanding the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.  Conservation Biology 32(5): 1128-1138.

Presentations and Posters

Featured presentations:

IUCN Green Status of Species 3-part webinar series. Global Center for Species Survival, Indianapolis Zoo. May 2024.

Assessing recovery and conservation Impact with the IUCN Green Status of Species: How and why you should get involved. Reverse the Red webinar. June 2023.

An introduction to the IUCN Green Status of Species and its application for conservation management, monitoring and decision-making. ZSL Science and Conservation Event Series. March 2022.

Successful Species Conservation. Wednesdays for the Planet: Europe Reclaims Biodiversity. UNEP/Geneva Environment Network. June 2021.

Supervision & Funding

Supervision

2024-2025. Katherine Wright, Master’s student, University of Oxford. Establishing the recovery status and recovery potential of raptors in the UK compared to their global populations

2024-2025. Agata Czernecka, Master’s student, University of Oxford. UK Contribution to Global Recovery of Grey Seals.

2024-2025. Michael Chase, Master’s student, University College Dublin. Green Status of European Freshwater Bivalves – Preliminary Assessments for Policy Recommendations.

2023-2024. Elliot Carlton, Master’s student, University of Oxford. Understanding the recovery status of the world’s large carnivores

2023-2024. Zachary Braithwaite, Master’s student, University of Oxford. Characterising the trade in frog meat in Central and West Africa

2022-2024. Rebecca Young, Postdoc, University of Oxford/ Durrell Wildlife. Adapting the Green Status of Species methods for sub-global assessments

2020-2021. Michael Boyle, Postdoc, University of Cambridge. Investigating spatial unit delineation effects on the Green Status of Species

2018–2020. Alec Bannister, University of Oxford. FHS Project: Using the Nordic and Barents Seas (NoBa) Atlantis model to estimate the impacts of climate change on species recovery potential

2018–2020. Wanda Criswell, University of Oxford. FHS Project: Green List assessment of wild pigs (Sus scrofa)

2019–2020. Tim Hawkins, University of Cambridge. Third-year project: Assessing variation in Green List recovery outcomes caused by spatial unit disagreement

2019–2020. Colin Kearney, University of Cambridge. Third-year project: Exploring functionality of American Bison to inform their Green List assessment

2017–2019. Joseph Bush, University of Oxford. FHS Project: Assessing Britain’s native species with the IUCN Green List of Species criteria

2017–2019. Michael Hammond, University of Oxford. FHS Project: Weighting spatial units within the Green List of Species protocol

  1. Emma Fowler, Stanford University/University of Oxford. Oxford Mentor, Stanford University Bing Overseas Studies Program

2016–2017. Erica Castaneda, University of Central Florida. Undergraduate Thesis: Does traffic noise affect the feeding behavior of Cuban treefrog tadpoles?

2015–2017. Vernell Leavings, University of Central Florida. Undergraduate Thesis: Do tadpoles alter movement patterns in response to traffic noise?

2013–2014. Mychol Styles, University of Central Florida. LEARN Project: Impact of Roadside Animal Detection Systems on the Florida Panther Mortality Rate

2013–2014. Jessica Milos, UG, University of Central Florida. LEARN Project: The effect of driver age on panther-vehicle collisions and reaction to the Roadside Animal Detection System (RADS)

Funding

Royal Society International Exchanges Fellowship. From species to ecosystems: sharing lessons to create a standardised measurement of ecosystem recovery. 2023.

Lyda Hill Foundation. Follow on Suport for Green Status of Species. 2022 – 2025.

National Science Foundation (US). An interdisciplinary Working Group to catalyze the science of species’ pre-impact distributions. 2021-2024

Lyda Hill Foundation. Green Status of Species Global Implementation. 2021 – 2022.

IUCN Species Survival Commission Internal Grant: Integrating the Green Status of Species into the Red List Website. 2020 – 2021.

Cambridge Conservation Iniritaive Collaborative Fund: The Green List of Species: towards a standard for measuring species recovery. 2019 – 2020.

Fondation Franklinia. Incentivising tree conservation: Making the IUCN Green List of Species work for trees. 2018 – 2019.

National Environmental Research Council Knowledge Exchange Fellowship. Assessing conservation success in government, policy, and business using the IUCN Green List of Species. 2018 – 2021.

University of Oxford Knowledge Exchange Seed Fund. Making the IUCN Green List work for government and business. 2018.

National Environmental Research Council Knowledge Exchange Fellowship. From Red to Green: Synthesizing research to create a metric of species conservation success for multiple end-users. 2017 – 2018.