IUCN Chief Menon Drives Diversity Shift, Aims to Expand Red List

In October 2025, Razan Al Mubarak Menon, the newly appointed Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has wasted no time in implementing key changes. On his second day in office, Menon reformed the IUCN steering committee to include more women and better representation from the Pacific Islands and other sub-regions.

Menon, a multi-award-winning conservationist with 25 years of experience at IUCN, is now looking to replicate the successful model he used during his tenure as head of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group. Under his leadership, all 13 countries home to Asian elephants signed a common minimum programme that ensured specific, time-oriented conservation plans. This resulted in 10 of the 13 countries setting up national elephant action plans, and helped keep the species from going extinct in at least one country, Vietnam.

Menon now plans to apply this collaborative approach across IUCN's specialist groups, believing that closer monitoring and cooperation between government representatives and scientists can lead to more effective policy changes. He also wants to significantly expand the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which currently assesses the conservation status of around 1.7 lakh species. Menon believes the Red List should include over 1 million, or even 8 million species, and is exploring the use of modern tools like AI to speed up the assessment process.