iucnrdata

iucnrdata provides local R access to IUCN Red List data distributed through the GBIF Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A). It is designed as an offline data companion for biodiversity and conservation workflows that need taxonomy, IUCN threat categories, distribution metadata, and vernacular names without re-downloading the archive on every analysis.

The package preserves the column names defined in the DwC-A meta.xml file (taxonID, scientificName, threatStatus, vernacularName, and related terms) so users can trace each field back to the original source structure.

Installation

Install the development version from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
# pak::pak("PaulESantos/iucnrdata")
install.packages("iucnrdata", repos = c('https://paulesantos.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

Then load the package:

library(iucnrdata)

Included datasets

iucnrdata includes three package datasets generated from the IUCN GBIF Darwin Core Archive.

Dataset Rows Columns Source file Description
iucn_taxon 310,544 16 taxon.txt Taxonomic core with scientific names, classification, authorship, rank, accepted/synonym status, citations, and references.
iucn_threatstatus 178,011 5 distribution.txt IUCN Red List assessment extension with threatStatus, locality, occurrence status, and source citation.
iucn_vernacularname 182,200 4 vernacularname.txt Vernacular names extension with language code and preferred-name flag.

The datasets are linked by taxonID:

iucn_taxon$taxonID
  |-- iucn_threatstatus$taxonID
  `-- iucn_vernacularname$taxonID

Column names

The package keeps Darwin Core and GBIF field names unchanged.

names(iucn_taxon)
#> taxonID, scientificName, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus,
#> specificEpithet, scientificNameAuthorship, taxonRank,
#> infraspecificEpithet, taxonomicStatus, acceptedNameUsageID,
#> bibliographicCitation, references

names(iucn_threatstatus)
#> taxonID, locality, source, threatStatus, occurrenceStatus

names(iucn_vernacularname)
#> taxonID, language, vernacularName, isPreferredName

Basic use

Load the local datasets with data() or access them directly after attaching the package.

library(iucnrdata)

data(iucn_taxon)
data(iucn_threatstatus)
data(iucn_vernacularname)

head(iucn_taxon)
head(iucn_threatstatus)
head(iucn_vernacularname)

Common operations include checking accepted names, summarizing threat categories, and joining extensions to the taxonomic core.

# Accepted taxon names
accepted_taxa <- subset(iucn_taxon, taxonomicStatus == "accepted")

# Number of records by IUCN Red List category
sort(table(iucn_threatstatus$threatStatus), decreasing = TRUE)

# English vernacular names
english_names <- subset(iucn_vernacularname, language == "eng")

# Link common names to scientific names
common_names_with_taxonomy <- merge(
  english_names,
  iucn_taxon[, c("taxonID", "scientificName", "taxonomicStatus")],
  by = "taxonID",
  all.x = TRUE
)

Downloading and processing the GBIF archive

The package also includes utilities for rebuilding the datasets from a local or freshly downloaded DwC-A export.

# Download and unzip the latest IUCN GBIF Darwin Core Archive
dwc_dir <- download_iucn_gbif()

# Read taxon.txt, distribution.txt, and vernacularname.txt
gbif_data <- process_iucn_gbif(dwc_dir)

names(gbif_data)
#> iucn_taxon, iucn_threatstatus, iucn_vernacularname

For package development, the reproducible data-cleaning entry point is:

source("data-raw/clean_iucn_gbif_data.R")

That script reads the Darwin Core text files with data.table::fread() and saves the package datasets with usethis::use_data(..., compress = "xz").

Data source and license

The underlying data are published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and hosted by GBIF as a Darwin Core Archive.

Citation

When using these data in research, reports, teaching material, or software, cite the IUCN Red List data source and retain the GBIF DOI:

International Union for Conservation of Nature (2026). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2026-1. Hosted by GBIF Secretariat. https://doi.org/10.15468/0qnb58.

BibTeX:

@misc{iucn_2026_gbif,
  doi = {10.15468/0qnb58},
  url = {https://www.gbif.org/dataset/19491596-35ae-4a91-9a98-85cf505f1bd3},
  author = {{International Union for Conservation of Nature}},
  title = {The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species},
  publisher = {International Union for Conservation of Nature},
  year = {2026},
  copyright = {Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International}
}

Related package

iucnrdata is intended to provide offline datasets for downstream tools such as iucnr, while keeping the source data structure transparent and reproducible.