Extinct and endangered animals since 1500
For more than two decades, there had been no confirmed record. Now it is certain: The Mindoro bleeding-heart (Gallicolumba platenae) lives on. In August 2026, a camera trap photographed a single bird on the Philippine island of Mindoro—the first confirmed image of the Critically Endangered species since 2005. This predominantly
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For more than four decades, the spinach pipefish (Microphis spinachioides) had not been scientifically documented. Known only from Papua New Guinea, this freshwater fish belongs to the pipefish family and is therefore related to seahorses. In June 2026, the long-lost species resurfaced: On the lower Sepik, New Guinea’s longest river,
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How many species of Galápagos giant tortoises are there, exactly? There is probably no simple answer to this question. On the archipelago’s different islands and volcanoes, separate populations evolved, some of which differ markedly in body shape, behavior, and genetic makeup. One classification system commonly used today groups them as
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A tragic story Like the dodo, the Stephens Island wren or Lyall’s wren is one of the best-known symbols of human-caused extinction. Its story is often told with dramatic simplicity: a cat that arrived on Stephens Island with the lighthouse keepers discovered a previously unknown, flightless bird there—and single-handedly wiped
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Why do some animal species face a particularly high risk of extinction, while others survive even major changes to their environment? Steller’s sea cow was hunted intensively, the crescent nail-tailed wallaby was driven back by introduced foxes and cats, and the Bramble Cay melomys ultimately lost what little habitat it
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Camera traps have photographed the rare Mayr’s forest rail (Rallicula mayri) in the Indonesian part of New Guinea. The poorly studied bird species had last been recorded in the Foja Mountains in 2007. The images were captured in September 2023 as part of Expedition Cyclops, an international research project led
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During an expedition in Papua New Guinea, four young birdwatchers made an extraordinary discovery: In just 17 days, they documented three lost bird species in the mountain forests of New Ireland that had not been reliably recorded for years or even decades—the white-naped lory (Lorius albidinucha), the New Ireland friarbird
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On the Mexican island of Cozumel, a living Cozumel fox has been documented in photographs for the first time. The record is extraordinary because this dwarf island form from the gray fox genus was previously known with certainty only from subfossil bone finds. Although there had been individual sighting reports
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The blue-fronted lorikeet (Charmosynopsis toxopei) has been documented again. In April 2026, an expedition team documented the rare parrot species in the highlands of Mount Kapalatmada on the Indonesian island of Buru. It is the first confirmed record since 2014 and only the second confirmed observation of the species since
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For some plant species, fewer than ten mature wild plants remain in nature—sometimes even just a single individual. Such species show how far a decline can go: habitats shrink, populations break apart, and in the end only isolated plants remain, their survival often depending on chance. 15 plant species with
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