Emperor Penguins Are Now Endangered - This is Why

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:08]We all know emperor penguins, the tallest and the heaviest of the group, the ones with the bright yellow ear patches, and also the only penguin species that breeds during the harsh Antarctic winters, sheltering together to generate heat.

[00:00:21]But what if they were to disappear, never to be seen again?

[00:00:27]It sounds crazy given the remote habitats and seemingly ample range, but this is a reality that we do have to more seriously contend with as emperor penguins, as of April of 2026, have been classified as endangered.

[00:00:41]This is all very shocking news as it confirms what researchers have known for a long while, that the impacts of climate change are now starting to seriously impact these most iconic of birds. But by how much and in what ways they will be are all valid questions to be asked, and I do hope to answer them here.

[00:00:58]For some backgrounds, the first emperor penguin breeding colony was discovered at Cape Crozier on Ross Island during Robert Scott's Discovery Expedition back in 1902. It was then in the 1960s that Scott's own son, Sir Peter Scott, helped to establish the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List, which shows just how small a world really is when it comes to these matters.

[00:01:21]Now 124 years later, over not a long period of time in a species sense, these penguins have now skipped over the vulnerable category and have gone from not threatened to endangered after assessments used by that established framework, which is most shocking indeed.

[00:01:36]To answer the question straight up on why emperor penguins are endangered, it's clear to all that it's because of anthropogenic climate change, which is most problematically destabilizing the stable sea ice that the penguins use to raise their young.

[00:01:48]These changes don't just impact their habitats, but also their food availability as well. As krill, the main keystone of the whole Antarctic food web, are both moving into more southwards and deeper waters, which means penguins have to travel for further and dive deeper to obtain their food, putting stress on both the parents who have to find and accumulate food, as well as on the baby penguins, which rely on their parents support during these critical early life stages.

[00:02:14]This classification of them being classed as endangered has been a long time coming, as given populations in the past have proven that they're incredibly vulnerable to climatic changes, with the declines of 50% in the Terre Adélie region being observed during an especially prolonged warm period in the late 1970s, which lowered sea ice coverage at the same time.

[00:02:34]Declines have also occurred when sea ice has expanded, with these changes and the impacts that follow showing that any such big changes, no matter whether it's a reduction or an increase in the overall habitats, have a deleterious impact on these birds.

[00:02:48]Another big example of this was in 2009, where the Dion Islands colony, a population that had been extensively monitored and studied since 1948, completely went off the radar. But where the birds went, and if any survived at all, is still unknown.

[00:03:03]This event, in a way, was a prelude to this recent classification, as this was the first confirmed documented loss of an entire emperor penguin colony. And more events have followed since.

[00:03:13]One of the biggest of these was in 2022, when four out of the five known breeding sites in the Bellingshausen Sea collapsed, where thousands of chicks either drowned or froze to death.

[00:03:24]The chicks are as vulnerable as they are because of the fact that they've yet to develop their waterproof feathers during their crucial growing periods, and as such are unable to swim effectively once in the water.

[00:03:34]The thing is also that even if they do manage to get out of the water, the absolutely frigid temperatures that they find themselves in means that once they emerge, they are thoroughly soaked and are then easily susceptible to freezing to death.

[00:03:47]Why so many chicks died in these events is due to the reliance on something known as fast ice, which is a type of ice that stays attached to the sea birds and all lands that is underneath it.

[00:03:57]This perceived certainty of its continual existence is why emperor penguins choose these kind of areas to nest in, as it allows the parents to raise their chicks in a secure environment close to the sea without having to move around very much, along with giving the chicks the time to grow the swimming feathers needed so that they'll be able to dive on their own.

[00:04:16]Emperor penguins overall, young and old, therefore depends on stable Antarctic sea ice to be able to be present in good qualities. But as we know, it's now in increasingly short supply.

[00:04:26]It's been so bad that as of late, in between 2018 and 2009, more than 20,000 adult birds, which for reference is about 10% of the population, were found to have been lost, something which was found through satellite imaging.

[00:04:40]With all of this occurring, it is therefore been projected that their total population could more than halve by the early 2070s if nothing is done to avert this decline. And it's a decline that is also more pronounced in different regions.

[00:04:53]For example, the populations in Western Antarctica have been estimated to have declined an astonishing 22% between 2018 and 2023, which is a real loss and one even worse than what the population model projections had estimated.

[00:05:08]With around 595,000 adults alive today, having such a small population means that once the decline starts, it will be one which as mentioned earlier, will happen much quicker than people think. And that is a great cause for concern.

[00:05:22]Their relatives, the king penguins, of which they share a genus with, Aptenodytes, have also been estimated in some models to lose 80% of their population over the next 80 years. So, there is also a risk in the wider penguin group as well.

[00:05:36]The IUCN reports, on another note, also brings up the Antarctic fur seals, which are now also classified as endangered, with their population having dropped by more than half between 1999 and 2025, from 2 million to fewer than 1 million.

[00:05:51]They, alongside the emperor penguin, are now the first of these groups in the Southern Ocean to be given this kind of critical conservation status. And it's all for the same reasons that I've mentioned earlier in this video, plus some more.

[00:06:02]The big worry that I haven't yet mentioned is the spreads of the highly contagious and dangerous avian influenza, which has further added strain on these vulnerable populations, including to the Southern elephant seal, where some colonies have lost more than 90% of their pups, alongside declines also being seen in the breeding adults.

[00:06:21]This has now caused these animals to be classified as vulnerable, and therefore another animal species critical to the health of an of the Antarctic seals to be hard hit.

[00:06:30]This is also not to mention that other Antarctic seals, including the crabeater, leopard, Weddell, and the Ross seals, which I covered recently on the channel, have, {quote} unknown population trends, and therefore it's hard to know to just how well they're actually doing.

[00:06:45]To conclude, these recent listings make it clear that the threats these animals face from climate change are very much an unfolding current issue that will need some serious monitoring and action if we are best to protect them. Not to mention cutting CO2 emissions as urgently as possible.

[00:07:01]The advantage that we have in terms of being a connected society is that we know the tools and the means to transition away from a reliance of burning up fossil fuels. But when it comes to, well, most of our governments, getting any sort of action done is going to come with more of us putting ourselves out there and advocating for our fellow earthly inhabitants.

[00:07:20]Educating people along the way of how critical it is that we protect, preserve, and enhance our natural environments, so that more people can be made aware of just how spectacular our planet is, and also that it's incredibly vulnerable and needs our protection.

[00:07:36]All in all, I thank you for watching this video on these animals, and that you may have learned something new. If you would like to see more from this channel, be sure to subscribe if you haven't already. And with that, I'll see you next time, whenever that may be.