Bangladesh is preparing an updated National Red List after confirming 31 wildlife species have gone extinct within the country. The new assessment covers 1,619 species across vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants — significantly expanding the previous list. The exercise follows IUCN Red List criteria and is coordinated by the Forest Department under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. The update will inform national biodiversity conservation targets aligned with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in 2022.

A National Red List applies IUCN's globally standardised categories — Extinct, Extinct in the Wild, Critically Endangered, Endangered, Vulnerable, Near Threatened, Least Concern, and Data Deficient — to species within a specific country's borders. This is distinct from the global IUCN Red List: a species can be nationally extinct while surviving elsewhere, making national red lists critical for domestic conservation policy.

The IUCN Red List uses five quantitative criteria (A through E) covering population decline rate, geographic range, population size, quantitative analysis, and probability of extinction. A species qualifies as Critically Endangered if its population has declined by ≥80% over 10 years or three generations.

Bangladesh's exercise is significant because it feeds into National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs), which are mandatory under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The Kunming-Montreal GBF's Target 2 calls for halting human-induced extinction of known threatened species by 2030. The '31 extinct species' figure is the kind of precise number examiners blank out in MCQs.

For India, the parallel machinery is the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), operating under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). India's own Red List assessments feed into Project Tiger, Project Elephant, and the Species Recovery Programme under the Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats scheme.