Dunn (2005) puts forward an interesting challenge: “If we are serious about insect conservation, we need to spend more time and money documenting extinctions.” Arguably, we should spend more resources ensuring that the ship stays afloat and is on course rather than perfecting technology to record its sinking. This is not so much a criticism as an appeal for a more positive approach. Dunn (2005) is right to accept the IUCN Red List (IUCN 2002) assessments of insects as an incomplete database. The current IUCN Red List, as it regards insects, is like the fossil record: complete in some isolated spots but with huge voids. Each new assessment, like each new and significant fossil find, throws considerable light in unexpected corners. The insect entries on the Red List reflect recorder effort as much as they do the actual conservation status of insects in general. This is emphasized by Quayle and Ramsay (2005), in the same issue of Conservation Biology, who illustrate that there should be less reliance on the continued use of indicators of the state of local biodiversity when the use of those indicators is based solely on their conservation status. Instead, Quayle and Ramsay recommend the use of strategic indicators of species at risk based on long-term monitoring data, deliberate and explicitly stated baselines, and consistent methods of conservation ranking. The problem with using conservation status is that much of the change in status comes from alterations of methodology, improved knowledge in species status, taxonomic revision, and varying effort put into status assessments. This was the case for some South African insects (Samways 2002, 2006) and Canadian taxa (Quayle & Ramsay 2005). In the case of South African Odonata, Pseudagrion citricola is much more common than formerly thought and was removed from the Red List, whereas Metacnemis angusta, which had not been seen since 1920 and was feared extinct, was rediscovered following improved field-search methods and population recovery