The world’s largest penguin species has been declared officially in danger of extinction after mass drownings of chicks caused by melting sea ice, according to a new assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Emperor penguins depend on sea ice firmly attached to the coast for nine months of the year, using it as a safe haven where their chicks are hatched and raised until they develop waterproof feathers. Adults also rely on the ice while they moult and regrow their swimming feathers.
However, global heating has led to record lows in Antarctic sea ice since 2016. When the ice breaks up early, entire colonies can fall into the ocean, causing chicks to drown. Even those that escape the water are soaked and freeze to death.
Four of the five known emperor penguin breeding sites in the Bellingshausen Sea collapsed in 2022, with thousands of chicks lost. Another colony in the Weddell Sea collapsed in 2016. Researchers called the catastrophes “grim” and “extraordinarily distressing.”
The IUCN assessment projects that the emperor penguin population will be cut in half by the 2080s due to sea ice loss. The current adult population, estimated at 595,000, has already fallen by 10 percent between 2009 and 2018.
The species has jumped two categories on the conservation red list, from “near threatened” to “endangered.”
The assessment also found that the climate crisis has driven a halving of the Antarctic fur seal population since 2000 due to a reduction in krill, their primary food source. The seal has moved three categories, from least concern to endangered.
“The emperor penguin’s move to endangered is a stark warning: climate change is accelerating the extinction crisis before our eyes,” said Martin Harper, chief executive of BirdLife International, which coordinated the assessment. “Governments must act now to urgently decarbonise our economies.”
Marine ecologist Dr Philip Trathan, who worked on the analysis, said, “Human-induced climate change poses the most significant threat. Emperor penguins are a sentinel species that tell us about our changing world and how well we are controlling greenhouse gas emissions.”
Dr Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey, who reported the 2022 colony collapses, said, “It’s a grim story. I was shocked. It’s very hard to think of these cute fluffy chicks dying in large numbers.”
