British Columbia Species Status Changes from 2008 to 2025

5,521 Yellow, 1,233 Blue, and 493 Red-listed species are currently tracked in British Columbia, representing a 25% rise in species at risk since 2008. The dataset, compiled by Peter Thompson from the B.C. Conservation Data Centre, reports status changes for 1,545 animal and 3,775 plant species over this period. Analysis reveals most status changes were due to new information rather than genuine population recovery.

Use Cases

• Tracking population risk trends over time based on the reported status changes for 5,320 species.
• Analyzing the prevalence of genuine versus non-genuine status changes based on the documented explanations.
• Comparing conservation outcomes for animals versus plants based on the differing rates of uplistings and downlistings.
• Assessing the impact of provincial listing systems by monitoring changes in the Red, Blue, and Yellow Lists.

Strengths

• Contains specific counts for three conservation status categories (5,521 Yellow, 1,233 Blue, 493 Red).
• Covers a 17-year time series from 2008 to 2025.
• Includes analysis of the drivers (genuine vs. non-genuine) behind 5,320 documented status changes.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the B.C. Conservation Data Centre.

Provenance

Source

B.C. Conservation Data Centre, compiled by author Peter Thompson.

Collection Method

Compilation of historical species status data using the NatureServe ranking system.

Time Range

2008 to 2025

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-06 04:11:12; freshness should be verified.

Geography

British Columbia, Canada