The question of “What animals will be extinct in 2025?” reflects the intense, immediate concern surrounding the current biodiversity crisis. Extinction is a biological process that unfolds over geological timescales, making a specific calendar year prediction scientifically impossible. Despite this unpredictability, the planet is experiencing species loss at a rate estimated to be 100 to 1,000 times higher than the natural background rate seen throughout history. This alarming acceleration is the defining feature of what many scientists recognize as the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event, characterized by the rapid disappearance of a vast percentage of the world’s species over a geologically short period.
Understanding Extinction: Why Specific Dates Are Misleading
The modern framework for assessing extinction risk relies not on a fixed date, but on a species’ current status and the probability of its survival. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species provides the system for classifying this risk. This system uses quantitative criteria related to population decline rate, geographic range, and population size to determine a species’ conservation status.
The category that signals the most immediate danger is Critically Endangered (CR), which means a species faces an extremely high probability of extinction in the wild. A species achieves this status if its population has declined by 80 to 90 percent over the last 10 years or three generations, or if the total number of mature individuals is fewer than 50. This designation acts as a scientific warning that a species has reached a precarious state, not as an expiration date.
Extinct in the Wild (EW) status is assigned when a species is known to survive only in cultivation, in captivity, or as a naturalized population well outside its historic range. For a species to be declared EW, exhaustive surveys across its known and expected habitat must fail to record a single individual. The persistence of a species in this category depends entirely on human intervention, making it a functional extinction from the natural world.
Species Facing the Highest Risk of Imminent Extinction
The Critically Endangered classification applies to species facing imminent collapse, including the world’s rarest marine mammal, the Vaquita. This porpoise is found exclusively in a small area of the northern Gulf of California, Mexico, and recent 2024 surveys estimate only six to eight individuals remain. The Vaquita’s fate is directly tied to illegal fishing, where the animals become entangled and drown in gillnets set for other species.
The Amur Leopard, a subspecies native to the Russian Far East and northern China, is another high-profile example. This big cat’s population has seen a modest recovery due to conservation efforts but remains small, with approximately 100 individuals surviving in the wild. The species is highly vulnerable to inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity due to its fragmented population structure.
African Black Rhinos remain classified as Critically Endangered, despite successful conservation programs that have seen their population recover to nearly 6,788 today. This status persists because the species continues to face significant threats from poaching across its African range. Poaching pressure remains a constant drain on the population, especially in South Africa and Namibia.
Beyond these examples, the Sumatran Rhino, the smallest of the rhino species, has a wild population estimated to be as low as 34 to 47 individuals, primarily due to poaching and habitat loss across Indonesia. Similarly, the Javan Rhino is confined to a single national park in Indonesia, with only about 50 individuals, making it extremely susceptible to a single localized event like a volcanic eruption or a disease outbreak.
The Catalysts Driving Global Species Collapse
The decline of species is a symptom of systemic environmental pressures. The most significant driver is habitat fragmentation and loss, which reduces the total area a species can occupy while also isolating remaining populations. This fragmentation, often caused by human development and agriculture, restricts gene flow between groups, leading to inbreeding and a reduction in genetic diversity.
When habitats are broken into smaller patches, species are forced into marginal areas where they are subject to the “edge effect,” exposing them to increased predation and environmental stress. This loss of connectivity means that even if a species survives in a small pocket, it is effectively committed to future extinction. Genetic isolation makes populations less resilient to sudden changes or disease.
Climate change acts as an accelerator of these extinction processes by causing rapid environmental shifts that exceed a species’ ability to adapt. Rising global temperatures push climatic conditions outside the ecological niche to which many organisms have evolved, forcing them to shift their ranges to higher altitudes or latitudes. This rapid change is especially difficult for slow-moving or cold-blooded species, leading to increased rates of heat-related mortality and reproductive failure.
Finally, the introduction of invasive species and diseases poses a significant and often devastating threat, particularly to species in isolated environments like islands. Invasive species, such as predators or competitors introduced by human activity, can quickly outcompete native organisms for resources or prey on them without natural checks. Furthermore, the spread of novel pathogens, sometimes exacerbated by warming temperatures, can decimate small, genetically vulnerable populations that have no natural immunity to the new threats.