The conservation balance sheet: species lost and found as scientists race against time in 2025

The year 2025 brought both heartbreak and hope to the conservation world, as scientists officially documented extinctions while simultaneously discovering hundreds of new species. The dual nature of this scientific accounting reveals the complex reality of our planet’s biodiversity crisis.

Several species crossed the final bureaucratic threshold in 2025, receiving formal extinction listings on the IUCN Red List. These weren’t sudden disappearances, but rather the official acknowledgment of gradual declines marked by increasingly rare sightings and dwindling population records over decades. For researchers, these listings represented technical updates to scientific databases. For the broader public, they read like long-delayed obituaries for irreplaceable parts of Earth’s living heritage.

Yet amid these losses, discovery continued. Hundreds of organisms were described for the first time in scientific literature during 2025. Some emerged from recent fieldwork in remote locations, while others had been hiding in plain sight within museum collections, previously misidentified or overlooked by earlier researchers. This ongoing process of scientific discovery underscores how much we still don’t know about the natural world, even as parts of it disappear.

Behind these statistics lies intense human effort. Conservation professionals, researchers, and activists work tirelessly to slow species losses, often spending entire careers defending ecosystems and wildlife. The year also saw the passing of more than 80 individuals who dedicated their lives to environmental protection, highlighting both the personal cost of conservation work and the urgent need for continued commitment to preserving Earth’s remaining biodiversity.