Climate change is pushing two iconic Antarctic species towards the brink of extinction — the emperor penguin and the Antarctic fur seal, a new evaluation finds. The new listings, printed Wednesday by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, cite components akin to warming ocean waters, melting sea ice and declining availability of meals to maintain such species.
The IUCN Red List of at-risk species is an authoritative census of species most at peril, in addition to the causes of their decline. It is separate from classifications below the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which listed the emperor penguin as “threatened” in 2022. The Antarctic fur seal just isn’t at the moment listed below ESA classifications.
Both species are extremely charismatic megafauna. The emperor penguin is the most important of all penguin species, reaching upwards of three toes in peak and 100 kilos in weight. These birds — and their large, fluffy feathered infants — have been featured prominently within the basic March of the Penguins documentary. The fur seals, in distinction, are the smallest of the Antarctic seal species and reside totally on sub-Antarctic islands. They have been hunted almost to extinction within the nineteenth century, however authorized intervention and conservation initiatives had introduced them again. Now, they’re at risk once more.
The emperor penguin is transferring from “Near Threatened” to “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List, primarily based on new projections that its inhabitants shall be lower in half by the 2080s. Satellite information present that emperor penguins misplaced about 10% of their inhabitants between 2009 and 2018, totaling a lack of greater than 20,000 grownup penguins.
The most important issue that’s driving populations down is local weather change-related early breakup and losses of sea ice, mentioned Philip Trathan, a member of the IUCN working group that accomplished the penguin Red List evaluation.
“For emperor penguins, sea ice is their primary habitat,” Trathan advised NCS. “They breed on fast ice,” which is sea ice related to the shoreline. “They molt on fast ice or on ice floes. They feed within the sea ice in polynyas, leads and cracks in the ice.”
“As sea ice decreases, their habitat also decreases,” Trathan mentioned. “Major sea ice loss resulting from regional climate change remains an ongoing threat and will likely reduce breeding success and adult survival in the long-term.”
Seasonal sea ice within the Antarctic has considerably declined since 2016, he mentioned, which has led to elevated and even full breeding failure in almost half of the identified colonies of emperor penguins all through Antarctica.
Trathan mentioned there are two threads of proof that helped set up the emperor penguins’ status change: satellite tv for pc picture analyses supported by assessments accomplished on the bottom, in addition to inhabitants mannequin assessments.
As for the Antarctic fur seal, its status is being moved from “Least Concern” to “Endangered” on the IUCN Red List after its inhabitants shrank by greater than 50 p.c between 1999 and 2025. The seals’ inhabitants decline can be tied to local weather change, the IUCN discovered, which is decreasing the provision of krill, their most important meals supply.
Kit Kovacs, who labored on the Antarctic fur seal evaluation, advised NCS that as floor water temperatures shut to Antarctica improve, krill goes farther offshore and into deeper waters to get to colder areas. “This makes the krill much less accessible to land-based krill predators,” Kovacs mentioned.
“These new listings in the South Atlantic Ocean mirror changes that have already taken place in the North Atlantic Arctic where hooded seals, harp seals and ringed seals have already been shown to be in serious decline,” Kovacs mentioned.