Global 200

The Global 200 is the list of ecoregions identified by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the global conservation organization, as priorities for conservation. According to WWF, an ecoregion is defined as a "relatively large unit of land or water containing a characteristic set of natural communities that share a large majority of their species dynamics, and environmental conditions".^[1]^[2]^[3] For example, based on their levels of endemism, Madagascar gets multiple listings, ancient Lake Baikal gets one, and the North American Great Lakes get none.

The WWF assigns a conservation status to each ecoregion in the Global 200: critical or endangered; vulnerable; and relatively stable or intact. Over half of the ecoregions in the Global 200 are rated endangered.

^ Olson, D. M. & E. Dinerstein. 1998. The Global 200: A representation approach to conserving the Earth's most biologically valuable ecoregions. Conservation Biol. 12:502–515.[1] Archived 2016-10-07 at the Wayback Machine.
^ Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E. 2002. The Global 200: Priority ecoregions for global conservation. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 89(2):199-224, [2] Archived 2016-05-13 at the Wayback Machine.
^ The Nature Conservancy. 1997. Designing a geography of hope: guidelines for ecoregion-based conservation in The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Virginia

[1] Olson, D. M. & E. Dinerstein. 1998. The Global 200: A representation approach to conserving the Earth's most biologically valuable ecoregions. Conservation Biol. 12:502–515.[1] Archived 2016-10-07 at the Wayback Machine.

[2] Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E. 2002. The Global 200: Priority ecoregions for global conservation. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 89(2):199-224, [2] Archived 2016-05-13 at the Wayback Machine.

[3] The Nature Conservancy. 1997. Designing a geography of hope: guidelines for ecoregion-based conservation in The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, Virginia

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