Developing a next-generation biodiversity indicator to provide improved estimates of trends in wildlife abundance.

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Global biodiversity is in decline (IPBES, 2020). Understanding how wildlife populations respond to anthropogenically induced climate-change, land-use change and other threats is critical to 'bend-the-curve' of biodiversity loss (Mace et al, 2020). The Living Planet Index is a global dataset of 28,000 population trends of over 4400 vertebrate species that offers a unique tool for biodiversity assessment. It has been used nationally and internationally to assess progress towards biodiversity goals such as the Aichi targets, IPBES and post-2020 framework, and informs the Living Planet Report, WWF's biennial flagship report with an estimated reach of >100 million people. This project offers a unique opportunity to improve an impactful and widely-used global biodiversity indicator. It will develop a 'Living Planet Index 2.0', a next-generation indicator of trends in global wildlife abundance that uses state-of-the-art statistical modelling. The project includes four goals:1) Quantify and minimize biases caused by data gaps in the Living Planet Index database to best inform policy in locations with sparse data coverage.2) Characterize key regional and global drivers of biodiversity change by jointly modelling threat data (including climate and land use changes) and wildlife population trends.3) Identify extreme population changes (very rapid increases or declines) characterized as plausible vs unrealistic (eg, changes too rapid for the species' life history), and develop methods to reduce sensitivity of aggregated index assessments to such extremes.4) Build an easy-to-use and accessible dashboard for Living Planet Index 2.0 that combines improvements from goals 1-3 and directly informs policy-makers and prioritises conservation actions.