Not including plants was a the request of someone else when I was throwing around this subject on the boards about 6 weeks ago when yes many of these here comments would have been far more helpful=/ Someone else was going to head up Red List Plants in a separate category essentially is your answer.
In defense of archiving. I included that because I do think that this should be only for active red list animals and not red list animals who have not been listed for 10 or 15 years and what not. I put in a year grace period for it precisely to combat too much archiving going on as this gives waymarks about 1.5-2 years before this becomes an issue and by that point in time it is likely that the animal returns to the list anyway. I also have never seen archiving done before and didn't realize that archiving=deleting... If you have a way to take it out of the category without deleting (let's call it archiving since that is what archiving is), by all means I'm ears. I don't like the idea of archiving either, but at the same time I want to keep this category a running directory of what is currently on the red list, not what has been on the red list previously. We could probably make a seperate category for that and include a lot of animals that I'm more than happy aren't there anymore.
With laxed picture taking rules, there will certainly be an ability to not actually see the animal at the zoo... though I certainly frown on that. I wanted people to not neccearily be able to just know but also have to see the animal to guarantee that it is there...
As for extinct, a good idea but beyond the scope of this particular category. This is meant for the living extinct might be a great idea for a seperate category though.