suggest to support matching names against IUCN

[jhpoelen]

as proposed by @ajacsherman

please provide example

[jhpoelen]

IUCN backbone integration came up again in today's GBatNet meeting - fyi @arw36 @JelleZijlstra @n8upham @ajacsherman @kephelps @myrmoteras

[JelleZijlstra]

I'll what I did to get the 2024-1 IUCN taxonomy into Hesperomys. It's not great, and it's up to you whether something like this would be a fit for what you want to do.

• Go to https://www.iucnredlist.org/search
• Make sure you are logged in. I think I also had to fill out some form to explain why I wanted to download data.
• Go for a search (e.g., open the "Taxonomy" tab, find Mammalia)
• Click "Download" at the top right to download a CSV

This gave me two CSVs, I think one is supposed to represent the taxonomy and the other the assessments of individual species. I used that CSV to import the classification into my database at https://hesperomys.com/ce/84965; I also used this to create some spreadsheets I shared with Aja.

Regarding versioning, there is a version number (currently 2024-1, 2024-2 scheduled for late October). Somebody at the meeting today (I think Anna) said that the versioning applies to the spatial data. I sort of trust it also applies to the taxonomy, but that's difficult to verify; I hope they don't continuously make changes without telling us.

[jhpoelen]

@JelleZijlstra thanks for sharing your notes.

I was able to repeat the steps you described to download a copy of the taxonomic backbone.

I am baffled by why IUCN is making it so hard to re-use their taxonomic backbone. I understand that range maps may be sensitive, but taxonomic names without any associated data like range maps and/or IUCN status . . .

I wonder what their reasoning is.