IUCN Red List API

Name: IUCN Red List API
Brand: IUCN Red List API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey31 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Look up the conservation status, habitats, threats, and narrative assessments of species in the IUCN Red List by name, ID, country, or threat category.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the IUCN Red List API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the IUCN Red List API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with IUCN Red List API.

Look up the Red List conservation category for any species by scientific name or taxon ID

Retrieve habitat, threat, and conservation-measure records for a species assessment

List all species assessed in a country, region, or threat category for biodiversity reporting

GET STARTED

Start building with IUCN Red List API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Use Cases

Patterns agents use IUCN Red List API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Biodiversity Risk Assessment in ESG Reporting

Companies producing nature-related disclosures need to know whether their operations or supply chains overlap with threatened species. The IUCN Red List API returns the conservation category, threat list, and habitat coverage for any species, letting an ESG analyst assemble a defensible risk register tied to authoritative IUCN data rather than aggregated third-party sources.

Call GET /species/category/CR and GET /country/getspecies/{country} for each operating region and join the results to produce a critical-species exposure list

Conservation App Species Profile

Wildlife and citizen-science apps surface a species page when a user identifies an organism. Pull the IUCN category, narrative account, habitats, and threats with two calls — GET /species/{name} for the headline assessment and GET /species/narrative/{name} for prose — and render a profile that stays in sync with the latest published assessment.

Fetch GET /species/Panthera leo and GET /species/narrative/Panthera leo, then render a profile with category, range, and primary threats

Country-Level Biodiversity Monitoring

Government agencies and NGOs track changes in their country's threatened species over time. The country endpoints return all species assessed within a country and their categories, supporting trend analysis when run on a schedule against a stored baseline. The dataset covers more than 150,000 species globally with regular updates.

Schedule a weekly job that calls the country species list for KE and diffs the result against the previous run to detect new listings

AI Agent Wildlife Question Answering

An agent answering ecology questions retrieves the authoritative Red List record for a species rather than relying on parametric memory. Through Jentic the agent searches for 'iucn species status', loads the GET /species/{name} schema, and returns a citable answer with the assessment year and category.

Search Jentic for 'iucn red list lookup', execute GET /species/Pongo abelii, and quote the category, criteria version, and assessment year in the agent reply

Key Endpoints

31 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for iucn red list api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/species/{name}

Get assessment record by scientific name

GET

/species/id/{id}

Get assessment record by taxon ID

GET

/species/category/{category}

List species in a Red List category

GET

/species/narrative/{name}

Retrieve narrative assessment text

GET

/species/citation/{name}

Get the citation string for a species

GET

/species/common_names/{name}

Resolve common names to scientific names

GET

/species/page/{page_number}

Page through the full species catalogue

GET

/species/count

Total count of assessed species

GET

/species/{name}

Get assessment record by scientific name

GET

/species/id/{id}

Get assessment record by taxon ID

GET

/species/category/{category}

List species in a Red List category

GET

/species/narrative/{name}

Retrieve narrative assessment text

GET

/species/citation/{name}

Get the citation string for a species

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

IUCN tokens are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped execution tokens — the raw token is appended to the request query string at execution time and never appears in agent context or logs.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g. 'iucn red list lookup' or 'list endangered species in country') and Jentic returns matching IUCN operations with their input schemas, so the agent can call the right endpoint without consulting IUCN documentation.

Time to first call

Direct IUCN integration: 1-2 days including token application, schema modelling, and rate-limit-aware caching. Through Jentic: under 1 hour — search, load schema, execute.

FAQs

Specific to using IUCN Red List API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for IUCN Red List API?

IUCN does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call IUCN Red List API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the IUCN Red List API use?

Authentication is by API token passed as a 'token' query parameter on every request. Tokens are issued by IUCN through their partner application form. Through Jentic the token is stored in the credential vault and appended to outbound calls automatically.

What are the rate limits for the IUCN Red List API?

IUCN does not publish hard numerical rate limits but asks integrators to keep request volumes reasonable and to cache results where possible. Heavy bulk usage requires written permission. Schedule large country or category sweeps off-peak and store responses locally.

Can I look up a species by common name with the IUCN Red List API?

Yes. Call GET /species/common_names/{name} to resolve a common name to its accepted scientific binomial, then use GET /species/{name} or GET /species/id/{id} for the full assessment. Common-name results may include several candidates if the term is ambiguous.

How do I retrieve a species assessment through Jentic?

Search Jentic for 'iucn species lookup', load the GET /species/{name} operation schema, and execute with the scientific binomial. Jentic handles the token query parameter so the agent only needs to provide the species name.

Is the IUCN Red List API free to use?

The API is free for non-commercial research, education, and conservation use after registering for a token. Commercial usage and bulk redistribution require explicit permission from the IUCN Red List Unit and may incur a licence fee.