After a rapid decline, emperor penguins were added to the endangered list

Two of Antarctica’s best-known species, the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) and Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), have declined so dramatically and rapidly that they have been classified as threatened on the IUCN Red List.

A third Antarctic species, the elephant seal (Mirounga leonina), his status was updated from “least concern” to “vulnerable”.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains the Red List, which is considered the most comprehensive list of the world’s conservation status of animals, fungi and plants.

Satellite images show that between 2009 and 2018, about 10 percent of the emperor penguin population was lost, which equates to more than 20,000 adults, according to the IUCN. Projections suggest that the population will be halved by the 1980s.

“After careful consideration of the various potential threats, we have concluded that human-induced climate change poses the most significant threat to emperor penguins,” he said. Philip Trathanat the British Antarctic Survey, and a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, in a statement. “Premature spring breakup of sea ice is already affecting colonies around Antarctica, and further changes in sea ice will continue to affect their nesting, feeding and moulting.”

The Antarctic fur seal population has declined by more than 50 percent from more than 2 million adult seals in 1999 to 944,000 in 2025, also due to the effects of climate change.

Meanwhile, southern seal populations are being decimated by bird flu, which kills more than 90 percent of newborn pups in some colonies, the IUCN said.

Sharon Robinson at the University of Wollongong, Australia, says that in 2022 she and her colleagues found that emperor penguins are the most endangered Antarctic species and are likely to become extinct by 2100.

“As global warming warms the oceans and melts sea ice, the breeding grounds that allow emperors to reproduce successfully are being removed,” says Robinson. “Like most birds and mammals, baby penguins need a safe place to develop, and human activity is rapidly removing this stable platform.”

Both Robinson and Dana Bergströmalso at the University of Wollongong, worked on to study 2025 which had dire warnings about emperor penguins and other Antarctic species.

“Of the more than 60 known emperor colonies around the coast, about half have experienced increased or complete breeding failure since 2016 due to early fast ice loss, and 16 colonies have suffered two or more such events,” says Bergstrom. Fast ice refers to sea ice that is attached to the coast or seabed.

“This adds the context of the whole of Antarctica to the more extreme picture that occurs on the Antarctic Peninsula, where we saw chicks drowning as a result of the early breakup of the sea ice,” he says.

The World Wide Fund for Nature said in a statement that the fate of the emperor penguin is “inextricably linked to climate change policy”. “The transition away from fossil fuels and limiting the global temperature rise to as close as possible to 1.5°C is critical to avoiding the worst impacts,” WWF said.

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