How many species are endangered?
The IUCN Red List has assessed over 160,000 species and classifies more than 45,000 of them as threatened — meaning Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically Endangered. That is roughly 28% of everything assessed. The important caveat is that assessment is not random: birds and mammals are almost completely covered, while insects, fungi and marine invertebrates are barely touched, so the 28% figure describes the assessed sample rather than life on Earth. Around 41% of amphibians and 37% of sharks and rays are threatened.
How the figure is arrived at
Each species is assessed against five quantitative criteria: rate of population decline, geographic range size, small population size, very small range, and quantitative extinction-risk modelling. Meeting any one threshold triggers the category. The criteria are deliberately mechanical so that two assessors working from the same data reach the same answer.
How confident it is
- Low estimate
- 44,000
- High estimate
- 48,000
- Spread
- 1.1× between the bounds
The Red List is updated two or three times a year and the totals climb each time, mostly because more species get assessed rather than because more become threatened. Figures here reflect the 2024 assessments.
Other living things and the natural world counts
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many fish are there in the sea? somewhere between 3 trillion and 100 trillion — nobody knows
- How many bees are there in the world? roughly 2 trillion managed honey bees
- How many birds are there in the world? about 50 billion wild birds
- How many bacteria are there on Earth? about 5 nonillion
- How many earthquakes are there each year? about 20,000 located a year — around 55 a day
- How many chickens are there in the world? about 26 billion alive at any moment
Common questions
- How many species are endangered?
- more than 45,000 assessed as threatened
- How is that estimated?
- Each species is assessed against five quantitative criteria: rate of population decline, geographic range size, small population size, very small range, and quantitative extinction-risk modelling. Meeting any one threshold triggers the category. The criteria are deliberately mechanical so that two assessors working from the same data reach the same answer.
Related pages
- How many people are there in the world? about 8.2 billion
- How many grains of sand are there on Earth? roughly 7.5 quintillion on the world's beaches
- How many ants are there in the world? about 20 quadrillion
- How many trees are there in the world? about 3 trillion
- How many insects are there? about 10 quintillion
- How many species are there? about 8.7 million
- How many people have ever lived? about 117 billion
- How many drops of water are there in the ocean? about 27 septillion
- How many stars are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many countries are there in the world? Things people built
- How many bones are in the human body? The human body
- How many stars are there in the Milky Way? Space and the universe
- How many atoms are there in the universe? Space and the universe
- How many galaxies are there? Space and the universe
Sources
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species — International Union for Conservation of Nature