Changelog

A running log of what's shipped. SpeciesRadar is under active development — check back often or visit the roadmap to see what's coming next.

Latest IUCN Red List (2026-1) — Full Catalogue Refresh

  • Refreshed our entire threatened-species catalogue to the newest edition of the IUCN Red List (version 2026-1), so every global conservation status across the site reflects the latest assessment
  • The catalogue now covers 49,505 Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable species — more than a thousand newly listed species added since the previous edition
  • Revised threat categories across the catalogue: 183 species changed status (97 moved to a higher risk, 86 to a lower one), including the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), reassessed from Vulnerable to Critically Endangered
  • When species were reclassified under new scientific names, we carried their existing profiles, pages, and links across intact — so renamed species kept their history instead of appearing as duplicates
  • Species no longer classed as threatened keep their profile pages, so existing links and citations continue to work

Nepal's Conservation Outlook, Refined

  • Gave Nepal's conservation outlook a fuller, more honest picture — the landmark recoveries of tigers, rhinos and vultures now sit alongside the continuing loss of freshwater and wetland habitats and rising human-wildlife conflict, with the overall trajectory shown as stable rather than uniformly improving
  • Added a Conservation Spotlight to Nepal's profile — highlight cards for the country's tiger doubling, rising rhino numbers, the world's first Vulture Safe Zone, and its snow leopard population
  • Softened a handful of hard figures in the Nepal summary that couldn't be tied to a current source, and corrected the vulture conservation reference link

Navigation Tidy-Up

  • Removed a duplicate Blog link from the footer and cleaned the Blog entry out of the top navigation, so the menus are simpler and less cluttered

Mobile Layout Fixes

  • Fixed layout breaks on small screens — the species explorer filters, the country ranking table, and the homepage cards no longer overflow or scroll sideways on a phone
  • Trimmed the About page introduction for a cleaner read

Australia Profile Depth & Bigger, Cleaner Type

  • Expanded Australia's country profile to the same depth as Nepal — a rewritten conservation outlook, structured habitat zones, thirteen conservation partners with verified links, and a national vs global red-list comparison table
  • Added a Conservation Spotlight to Australia's profile — highlight cards for its mammal extinction record, invasive-species pressure, Indigenous Protected Areas and Rangers, and the Great Barrier Reef
  • Made Australia's red-list counts accurate by collapsing duplicate import rows, so the assessed and divergent totals now reflect distinct species
  • Enlarged body and heading text across the site to a more comfortable, magazine-style reading scale

Richer Articles & Better Imagery

  • Expanded our conservation news posts into fuller, properly structured reads — clear section headings, key-fact lists, a Frequently Asked Questions section, and links through to the relevant species and original sources
  • Every article now carries a relevant feature photograph with a descriptive caption and source credit
  • Replaced placeholder and off-topic images (stray logos and flags) with genuine species photographs, and made sure no two articles share the same picture
  • Gave each article in a related series its own distinct imagery rather than repeating one photo
  • Reviewed every published article against our editorial standard — headings, lists, data tables, in-text links, concise titles, and a clear opening — and brought the older ones up to the same quality

Fresher Data & Site Reliability

  • Newly added species now have their conservation detail — threat summaries, habitat notes, and source references — filled in on an ongoing basis, so new profiles become complete and useful much sooner
  • We now keep watch for new IUCN Red List releases and review our global conservation statuses as soon as an update is published, so the figures across the site stay current
  • Added continuous link-health checks across the whole site, so broken or moved external links are caught and flagged quickly instead of lingering
  • Country biodiversity reports are reviewed on a rolling schedule to keep each downloadable report up to date with the latest species and red list data
  • Improved how new and updated pages are surfaced to search engines, helping the latest species and country information appear in search results sooner

Downloadable Country Data & Sortable Tables

  • Every country profile can now be downloaded — export the Species, National Red List, and Protected Areas tables as a CSV spreadsheet or a branded SpeciesRadar PDF report, each with summary statistics and a source citation
  • Species exports cover the full list for the country, not just the page currently on screen
  • Turned the Species, National Red List, and Protected Areas lists into fully sortable tables — click any column heading to sort ascending or descending (species default to Critically Endangered first, red list entries to the species at highest local risk)
  • The Species tab keeps its quick category filters (CR / EN / VU), taxonomic group filter, and search
  • Expanded the Category Breakdown card on country profiles into a clear per-category readout — Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable each shown with a plain-language definition, count, and share of the threatened total
  • Fixed the Discover and Learn menus so they close after you choose an option, click away, or press Escape

Mass Extinction Timeline Redesign

  • Reimagined the homepage's mass extinction section as an immersive, documentary-style story — the five great extinctions and the unfolding sixth each get a full-width photographic panel (deep blue glacier, volcanic ash plume, meteor sky, clear-cut forest, and more), with the scale of species loss set boldly over the imagery
  • Panels reveal as you scroll; the present-day Holocene extinction stands apart in a pulsing red treatment and closes on a live count of the species threatened right now
  • Respects reduced-motion preferences — the full story stays readable without animation
  • Unified headline typography across the site on an elegant editorial serif (Playfair Display), paired with a clean sans-serif for body text, for a more polished, magazine-like feel

Country Profile Links & Imagery

  • Audited and corrected external links across country profiles so they point to live, relevant pages
  • Nepal: corrected all ten Ramsar wetland references and added Wikipedia reference links for every national park, conservation area, wildlife reserve, and hunting reserve
  • Updated conservation partner links and added the Snow Leopard Trust to Nepal's listed organisations
  • Retired dead links so they no longer appear broken — official agency homepages remain reachable from the Conservation Partners section
  • Fixed country header photos that were missing or showing the wrong region, falling back to a clean landscape gradient where a correct photo isn't yet available
  • Fixed a formatting bug that could garble sentences containing decimal percentages (for example "23.39%") in profile summaries

Species Pages & Search Redesign

  • Redesigned every species page with a tabbed, media-rich layout — a full-width hero photo, taxonomic breadcrumb, prominent IUCN status badge, and a persistent Quick Facts sidebar
  • Organised each profile into tabs: Overview, Range & Countries, Threats, Media, National Status, and Sightings
  • Added an interactive range map that highlights every country a species occurs in — teal for native range, lighter teal for introduced — with click-through to each country dashboard
  • Rebuilt species search at /species with instant autosuggest as you type, toggleable filters for status, taxonomic group, country, and population trend, sortable results, and shareable filtered links
  • Overview profiles now read as short, well-spaced paragraphs, and threats are shown as a severity-ranked chart
  • Introduced a consistent species card used across search results, country pages, and related-species sections — with hand-drawn group silhouette artwork when no photograph is available yet
  • Added "Other threatened species in the same family" and "Threatened in the same region" suggestions to the bottom of every species page, plus a "Ray of Hope" badge for rediscovered species
  • Refreshed the species experience with a teal and navy palette and Georgia display headings

Automated Blog Quality Repair

  • Every existing blog post now meets the full editorial standard — feature image with descriptive alt text, H2/H3 heading hierarchy, comparative data table, bulleted lists, inline data visualisation chart, and a Frequently Asked Questions section
  • Daily maintenance cron now audits each blog post against the editorial standard and automatically restores any missing structural element — readers always see fully-structured articles

Dynamic Homepage & Species of the Day Rotation Fix

  • Redesigned the homepage hero with a rotating photo carousel featuring Critically Endangered and Endangered species
  • Added animated counters for total threatened, Critically Endangered, Endangered, and Vulnerable species — counts up on page load
  • Added a "Right Now" activity ticker showing the latest featured species, new articles, and national red list imports
  • Fixed Species of the Day selection — now rotates CR → EN → VU by day, excludes any species featured in the last 90 days, and picks randomly within each category

Blog SEO Enrichment

  • Upgraded the blog publishing pipeline — posts now include hero imagery from public photo archives, structured data tables, proper heading hierarchy, and SEO metadata

Founder Profile Refresh

  • Expanded Dr Hem Sagar Baral's About page bio with hyperlinked organisations and a new headshot
  • Split Dr Baral's co-authored book list into separate bullets for readability
  • Expanded Tara Prakash Lama's profile with his full portfolio of data intelligence platforms
  • Updated Tara's listed role to International VP & Patron, Himalayan Nature

Country Page Enhancements

  • Added a conservation organisations section to country pages with direct links to each org
  • Made protected area names clickable — direct links to official reserve websites where available
  • Introduced a three-layer fact-checking process for country profile content

Blog Launch, New Domain & Navigation Refresh

  • Launched the SpeciesRadar Blog — a new editorial section for in-depth conservation writing
  • Migrated the primary domain from speciesradar.com to speciesradar.org
  • Moved Timeline and Blog from the top navigation into the footer to reduce visual clutter
  • Consolidated country page navigation — conservation leaders and organisations now appear directly on the main country page instead of a separate People tab

Academic Credibility & Country Page Redesign

  • Redesigned all country pages with tabbed navigation: Overview, Species, National Red List, Protected Areas, and People
  • Species tab now includes search, category/group filters, sort options, and 25-per-page pagination
  • Protected Areas tab displays areas in collapsible accordion sections grouped by type
  • National Red List gets its own dedicated tab with divergent assessment table and summary stats
  • People tab shows collapsible organisation cards and conservationists grouped by affiliation
  • Rewrote /about page with full co-founder bios — Dr Hem Sagar Baral (PhD, Helm field guide co-author, ZSL, Snow Leopard Trust) and Tara Prakash Lama (Chitwan naturalist, BCN patron, platform builder)
  • Created /methodology page covering data sources, pipeline, quality assurance, update frequency, limitations, and academic references
  • Created /terms page with data usage policy, academic citation templates, BibTeX, and CC BY 4.0 licence for derived content
  • Added academic citation footers to every species and country page (IUCN, GBIF, national red list citations)
  • Added Dr Baral endorsement quote on the homepage
  • Removed all beta/preview/under-construction language sitewide
  • Added Methodology and Terms links to footer and sitemap

National Red Lists, Roadmap & Enrichment Pipeline

  • Added national red list data for Nepal, Australia, Europe, and 100+ countries via nationalredlist.org (~10K assessments)
  • Created national_red_lists database table linking species to country-specific conservation statuses
  • Seeded 20 Nepal conservation organisations and 50 prominent conservationists with affiliations
  • Enhanced country pages with threatened species counts, conservation leaders, and paginated species lists
  • Enhanced species pages with threat narratives, habitat info, IUCN colour-coded badges, and population trends
  • Built public roadmap page with visual timeline and community suggestion system
  • Added email notifications for roadmap suggestions via SMTP
  • Created About, Partners, and Support pages describing mission, data sources, and funding model
  • Built resumable enrichment script using Claude API for threat narratives (CR > EN > VU priority)
  • Added database health check utility (db-counts)
  • Updated sitemap generation with country pages and priority weighting

SEO Foundations

  • Added dynamic sitemap.xml generation with species and country pages
  • Added robots.txt with sitemap reference

Dashboard & Homepage

  • Launched main dashboard page with biodiversity statistics overview

Citizen Science & PWA

  • Added user authentication (login, register, profile)
  • Built citizen science sighting reports with photo upload
  • Added Species of the Day feature in footer
  • Installed PWA support with service worker and manifest
  • Added scroll reveal animations and sticky species navigation
  • Built extinction timeline page
  • Created country hero images and conservation leader data
  • Set up cron jobs for daily, weekly, and monitoring pipelines