A principal feature of the modern Anthropocene epoch is the unprecedentedly high rates of change in many processes of the Earth System, including those in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Amazonian environments in particular are changing much too rapidly for their species and ecosystems to adapt. These rapid changes from local to global scales are driving the destruction of the Amazon terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, imperiling its vast biodiversity reserves and globally-important ecosystem services. The Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA) assessment report documents these epoch-scale transformations in processes governing the formation and maintenance of Amazonian biodiversity and ecosystems. The IUCN Red List (IUCN-RL) provides high-quality conservation assessments for individual species using multiple and rigorous criteria. Although the RL is the “gold standard” for conservation assessments, the process requires substantial time and information such that many species remain classified as “data deficient”. Meanwhile the rate and scale of environmental deterioration globally challenges the conservation community to develop expedited methods for risk assessment. This symposium will present case studies that use collection data from museum and publication records as proxies for assessing species extinction risk in multiple Neotropical plant and animal taxa. To compare IUCN-RL species threat assessments for Neotropical plant and animal taxa with threat assessment estimates obtained from four readily accessible data types that may serve as proxies for extinction risk: geographic range, elevation, species publication date, and proximity to areas with a rapidly changing human footprint. We will use these geographic and taxonomic data to generate preliminary conservation assessments for species currently awaiting IUCN assessment, and identify species that are potentially threatened. Land-use and climate change are the two greatest threats to the Amazon, directly threatening the Amazonian biodiversity and contribution to ecosystem services at multiple scales. The methods evaluated in this symposium will help the global conservation community assess the use of specimen collection data to more rapidly assess species extinction risk. We will use these results to test hypotheses that certain geographic areas and habitat types have highest conservation priority.