As Their Antarctic Habitat Melts Away, Emperor Penguins Are Now Considered an Endangered Species
The International Union for Conservation of Nature predicts that the birds’ population could be cut in half by the 2080s. The organization also changed the statuses of Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals
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Emperor penguins are in trouble. The roughly four-foot-tall birds are now listed as “endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, as human-caused global warming melts their Antarctic habitat.
The largest living penguin species, emperor penguins were previously listed as “near threatened.” But based on projections that their population may shrink by as much as half by the 2080s, the IUCN updated the species’ status. It shared the news in an April 9 announcement.
“Sea ice is their primary habitat,” says Philip Trathan, a member of the IUCN’s penguin specialist group, to CNN’s Andrew Freedman. “As sea ice decreases, their habitat also decreases. Major sea ice loss … will likely reduce breeding success and adult survival in the long term.”
The news comes on the heels of a study published in February that found that the birds’ catastrophic molt might be putting them at risk of extinction in the warming world.
Every year, emperor penguins replace all their insulative, waterproof feathers simultaneously. During this annual molt, which usually takes about 30 to 40 days, the birds must remain atop sea ice and refrain from diving into the Southern Ocean to feed, because their lack of waterproof feathers makes the frigid waters fatal.
“They’re not bald like a plucked chicken—their new feathers push out the old feathers—but they’re not waterproof at this stage,” Peter Fretwell, the study’s author and a geographic and remote sensing scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Euronews in February. “And that means that if the ice breaks out from under them while they’re molting, they go into the water without their ‘wetsuits,’ as it were, and they will become hypothermic and could die.”
Did you know? Satellite surveillance
Because penguins live in remote and rugged environments, scientists often turn to satellite imagery to keep tabs on them. They’ve discovered several new colonies this way, primarily by spotting the birds’ poop stains on the otherwise white ice.
As the planet heats up, Antarctic sea ice is becoming increasingly unstable. This appears to be taking a toll on the birds: While reviewing satellite imagery from 2025, Fretwell spotted just a handful of small groups in places where the birds have historically been abundant.
“It wasn’t just a few colonies that were lost, and it wasn’t a slow process,” Fretwell told BBC News’ Georgina Rannard. “It is the only piece of science I’ve ever done that’s really emotionally got me.”
In 2022, as many as 7,000 emperor penguin chicks are believed to have perished because of unstable sea ice. Chicks are covered in fluffy down feathers, which are not waterproof, so they are also susceptible to hypothermia if they end up in the Southern Ocean too soon.
Even before Fretwell’s recent revelations, the outlook was bleak; scientists predicted that emperor penguins would be mostly extinct by 2100. Now, though, the situation seems dire. The IUCN notes that an estimated 20,000 adult birds died between 2009 and 2018, a loss of roughly 10 percent of the population.
Xiao Cheng, a polar researcher at Sun Yat-sen University in China who was not involved in the IUCN’s assessment, agrees that emperor penguins are grappling with “increasing pressure.” But he tells the New York Times’ Rachel Nuwer that the birds may still be able to adapt and bounce back.
“While strengthening conservation actions is important, it is also important to carefully evaluate and maintain confidence in the species’ resilience,” he says.
The IUCN’s recent update also moved the Antarctic fur seal from “least concern” to “endangered,” noting that the species’ population has plummeted by more than 50 percent within three decades. Their numbers dropped from about 2,187,000 adults in 1999 to 944,000 individuals in 2025.
“Never in my career or lifetime did I expect what was once a super numerous species to be listed on the endangered species list,” Mary-Anne Lea, an ecologist at the University of Tasmania in Australia, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Jano Gibson.
The semiaquatic animals are having trouble getting enough food, as rising ocean temperatures and shrinking sea ice affect the distribution of krill, their primary food source. The pinnipeds are also competing for food with baleen whales, and they’re vulnerable to predation by orcas and leopard seals.
“Krill seems to be the crux of everything in the Southern Ocean,” says Kit Kovacs, a biologist with the Norwegian Polar Institute and co-chair of IUCN’s pinniped specialist group, to ABC News’ Julia Jacobo.
Additionally, the southern elephant seal moved from “least concern” to “vulnerable,” primarily because of deaths caused by highly pathogenic avian influenza. H5N1 bird flu, specifically, has been surging among animals since 2020. It has killed more than 90 percent of newborn pups in some southern elephant seal colonies and is also wiping out adult females.
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