Pragmatism and practice in classifying threats: a reply to Balmford et al.

We agree with Balmford et al. (2009) in their commentary on our paper describing the International Union for Conservation of Nature-Conservation Measures Partnership (IUCN-CMP) classification of direct threats (Salafsky et al. 2008) that "any system that tries to summarize the complexity of threats to wild nature in a simple, categorical classification is bound to be imperfect." However, we think Balmford et al. have made some substantial errors in their assessment of the IUCN-CMP system, and their alternative (hereafter the CCF [Cambridge Conservation Forum] system) creates more theoretical problems than it solves and will be difficult to implement.