Most of the world's critically endangered species are plants, not animals
As of March 2026, the IUCN Red List classed 10,774 species as critically endangered, about 6.2% of everything it assesses. Plants make up 6,445 of them, nearly 60%, far outnumbering the 4,277 animals. Some 1,406 on the list may already be gone, yet remain listed because nobody has proved it.
That caution is deliberate. The Red List will not declare a species extinct until thorough targeted searches have come up empty, so likely losses stay in the critically endangered category with a tag reading possibly extinct, or possibly extinct in the wild. The approach borrows from BirdLife International, which handles the list's assessments of birds. Critically endangered sits among the list's threatened categories, one of seven levels of extinction risk.
Qualifying requires meeting just one of five tests. A population may have crashed by at least 90% over ten years or three generations, if the causes are understood and have stopped, or by 80% if they have not. Alternatively, a species may occupy under 10 square kilometres or range across less than 100, with fragmentation, ongoing decline or wild swings. Fewer than 250 mature adults in decline also counts, as does fewer than 50 in total, or a modelled chance of at least 50% that it vanishes from the wild within ten years or three generations.
Habitat loss driven by people, through farming, urban growth and pollution, is the leading cause. Invasive species that outcompete natives come next, along with diseases arriving in places where local wildlife has no resistance.
Familiar names on the list include the vaquita, the Amur leopard, the kākāpō, the California condor and the axolotl, along with the Devils Hole pupfish, the hawksbill sea turtle and the peacock tarantula. Among plants, the Wollemi pine is one of the best known.
Source: Critically endangered
