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This is a re-post from the WMO Press Office

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has confirmed that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of extraordinary global temperatures. The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, and ocean heating continues unabated.

Key messages

• Past 11 years have been 11 warmest on record
• Temporary cooling by La Niña does not reverse long-term trend
• Ocean warming continues unabated
• WMO consolidates eight datasets for single authoritative source of information
• International data exchange underpins climate monitoring

The global average surface temperature was 1.44°C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13°C) above the 1850-1900 average, according to WMO’s consolidated analysis of eight datasets. Two of these datasets ranked 2025 as the second warmest year in the 176-year record, and the other six ranked it as the third warmest year.

The past three years, 2023-2025, are the three warmest years in all eight datasets. The consolidated three-year average 2023-2025 temperature is 1.48 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ± 0.13 °C) above the pre-industrial era. The past eleven years, 2015-2025, are the eleven warmest years in all eight datasets.

“The year 2025 started and ended with a cooling La Niña and yet it was still one of the warmest years on record globally because of the accumulation of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. High land and ocean temperatures helped fuel extreme weather – heatwaves, heavy rainfall and intense tropical cyclones, underlining the vital need for early warning systems,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.

“WMO’s state of the climate monitoring, based on collaborative and scientifically rigorous global data collection, is more important than ever before because we need to ensure that Earth information is authoritative, accessible and actionable for all,” said Celeste Saulo.

WMO’s announcement was timed to coincide with the release of global temperature announcements from the dataset providers.

These include the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5), Japan Meteorological Agency (JRA-3Q), NASA (GISTEMP v4), the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAAGlobalTemp v6), the UK’s Met Office in collaboration with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT.5.1.0.0), and Berkeley Earth (USA). This year, for the first time, WMO also factored in two additional datasets - the Dynamically Consistent ENsemble of Temperature (DCENT/UK, USA) and China Merged Surface Temperature Dataset (CMST).

Figure 1: Annual global mean temperature anomalies relative to the 1850-1900 average shown from 1850 to 2025 for eight datasets as shown in the legend.

Six of the datasets are based on measurements made at weather stations and by ships and buoys using statistical methods to fill gaps in the data. Two of the datasets – ERA5 and JRA-3Q – are reanalyses which combine past observations, including satellite data, with models to generate consistent time series of multiple climate variables including temperature. The key datasets all use slightly differing methodologies and so have slightly different temperature figures, and even annual rankings.

2025 was ranked the second warmest in DCENT and GISTEMP; third warmest in the other six, Berkeley Earth, CMST, ERA5, HadCRUT5, JRA-3Q, and NOAAGlobalTemp.

The actual average global temperature in 2025 was estimated to be 15.08 °C- however there is a much larger margin of uncertainty on the actual temperature at around 0.5 °C than on the temperature anomaly for 2025.

WMO – the UN agency for weather, climate and water - seeks to provide a consolidated authoritative analysis to support decision-making.

Ocean Heat

A separate study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences said that ocean temperatures were also among the highest on record in 2025, reflecting the long-term accumulation of heat within the climate system.

About 90% of excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, making ocean heat a critical indicator of climate change. From 2024-2025, the global upper 2000 m ocean heat content (OHC) increased by ∼23 ± 8 Zettajoules relative to 2024, according to the study led by Lijing Cheng with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. That’s around 200 times the world’s total electricity generation in 2024.

Regionally, about 33% of the global ocean area ranked among its historical (1958–2025) top three warmest conditions, while about 57% fell within the top five, including the tropical and South Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, North Indian Ocean, and Southern Oceans, underscoring the broad ocean warming across basins.

The study found the global annual mean sea surface temperature (SST) in 2025 was 0.49 °C above the 1981–2010 baseline and 0.12 ± 0.03 °C lower than in 2024, consistent with the development of La Niña conditions, but still ranking as the third-warmest year on record.

A new report from Oxfam Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power shows billionaire wealth reached $18.3 trillion in 2025, the highest level in human history. That’s more than the GDP of China, the world’s second largest economy. In fact, since 2020, billionaire wealth has increased by 81%.

All of this happens while one in four people don’t regularly have enough to eat, and nearly half the world lives in poverty. Families face rising costs for basics like food, rent, and electricity. Public services are stretched thin. Climate disasters hit harder and more often.

But what is worrying is that this small group holding extreme wealth, isn’t just buying luxury. They are buying control. Political outcomes. And of course, more fossil fuels. Billionaire power is building a dystopian, unliveable world with many government allies helping lock it in. Here is how: 

Billionaires are buying democracy, and blocking climate action

Oxfam’s report is clear: extreme wealth doesn’t sit quietly in bank accounts. It gets turned into political control. Alongside getting richer, billionaires are tightening their grip on the institutions meant to serve the public.

The research finds that billionaires are now 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people. That imbalance shapes real decisions, deciding what gets funded, what gets blocked, and whose voices are ignored.

And when billionaire political interests dominate, the consequences are brutal and predictable:

• climate action slows, fossil fuel expansion is protected, regulation is weakened, and public money gets funnelled into corporate profit instead of community needs.
• People demanding justice face crackdowns, shrinking civic space, and rising repression.

Oxfam points to the US Trump administration as a warning sign: a pro-billionaire government agenda that slashes taxes for the super-rich, undermines global cooperation to tax corporations, rolls back action on monopoly power, and boosts billionaire portfolios. But this isn’t confined to one country. Oligarchy is going global, and it’s undermining societies everywhere.

And it doesn’t stop at economic policy. Oxfam warns that civil liberties and political rights are being rolled back globally. 2024 marked the nineteenth successive year of decline, with a quarter of countries curtailing freedom of expression. When people protest, governments increasingly respond with violence.

Our bills are going up as their fortunes explode

In 2025, billionaire wealth surged by $2.5 trillion which is what is held by the bottom half of humanity (4.1 billion people). Oxfam estimates this money would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over.

At the same time, people are told there’s “no money” for clean energy, resilient infrastructure, or strong public services. Communities are pushed to accept austerity and “tough choices,” while extreme wealth concentrates at record speed.

Oxfam links these choices to real harm: governments slash aid budgets, directly hitting people living in poverty and potentially contributing to more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030.

The result is a world where life feels more unaffordable and more unstable, and where climate action gets treated like an optional extra, instead of a survival plan.

The climate crisis is a business model for the super rich

Billionaire lifestyles are high-emitting, and that matters. But the deeper problem runs through the economic model itself: billionaire wealth is built on extraction and climate plunder.

Many billionaires profit directly from industries tied to pollution and destruction: fossil fuels, mining, deforestation, and corporate land grabs. Their money shapes the political decisions that keep these industries protected, subsidized, and expanding.

And the fallout hits everyone else: higher bills, weaker public systems, polluted air and water, and escalating climate risks. Communities in the Global South and frontline regions pay first and worst while the people most responsible stay insulated from the damage.

They control what we read (and believe)

Billionaire power doesn’t stop at politics. It reaches into the media and the information systems we rely on every day.

The Oxfam report shows how billionaire power doesn’t stop at politics — it spreads into the media and information systems we rely on every day. Billionaires now own more than half of the world’s largest media companies, and they also control all the main social media platforms, giving a tiny group of ultra-rich people enormous influence over what information gets amplified, what gets buried, and how public debate is shaped.

Oxfam points to examples like:

• Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X, and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s ownership of the Los Angeles Times.
• In France, the report highlights how far-right billionaire Vincent Bolloré took control of CNews and reshaped it into a French version of Fox News.
• And in the UK, Oxfam notes that three-quarters of newspaper circulation is controlled by just four super-rich families.

This concentration of media power matters because it doesn’t just influence what people read, it shapes what people believe is possible, normal, or worth fighting for. Oxfam warns that when billionaires dominate media and social platforms, minority voices and dissenting perspectives get pushed out, while scapegoating and disinformation spread more easily. The report points to structural exclusion too: only 27% of top editors globally are women, and just 23% belong to racialized groups, reinforcing whose stories get centered, and whose get ignored.

This also fuels polarization, making it harder to build the public pressure needed for real climate action, and easier for fossil fuel interests to keep operating in plain sight. And while we’re distracted, the fossil fuel machine keeps running.

Oxfam also shows how governments enable this captured information ecosystem. Governments allow billionaire control of platforms to deepen, and in some cases even use these platforms to track, punish, and silence critics. Oxfam points to Kenya, where authorities use X to track, punish, and even abduct and torture government critics. And after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter/X, one study found hate speech increased by around 50%, showing how billionaire control over platforms can rapidly reshape what’s normal, visible, and tolerated online.

When billionaires control the narrative, they don’t just defend their wealth, they protect the system that keeps them on top.

The path forward: tax justice, climate justice, people power

The climate crisis demands more than good targets and speeches. It demands a shift in who holds power. Governments need to stop pandering to the ultra-rich and start delivering for people and the planet. That means:

• taxing extreme wealth to reduce its political dominance
• investing in renewable energy, clean transport, social housing, and strong public services
• protecting civic space and the right to organize and protest
• building real firewalls between wealth and politics

People are already pushing for this shift. Across countries, communities are organizing, demanding accountability, and refusing to accept a world run by billionaires and fossil fuel corporations.

Billionaire power is real. But people power is bigger. And when we move together, the future changes.

The post Billionaire Wealth Just Hit $18.3 Trillion. Why that’s bad news for the rest of us. appeared first on 350.

For much of modern history, humans have been taught to see other species at a distance — as resources, symbols, data points, or representatives of a category rather than as beings with inner lives. Science, religion, and culture have all played a role in reinforcing the idea that humans stand apart from the rest of the living world, uniquely endowed with intelligence, emotion, and agency.

And yet, across disciplines and traditions, that story has been unraveling during the last few decades. Advances in animal cognition and plant behavior research, long-term field observation, and new respect for traditional  Indigenous ecological knowledge have revealed something both radical and deeply familiar: Other species think, feel, remember, communicate, and relate, often in ways that challenge our assumptions about what intelligence and empathy even look like. Learning to truly see them requires not mastery, but attention.

Sy Montgomery has spent decades practicing and writing about this kind of attentive relationship with other species. A naturalist and author of more than 40 books for adults and children, Montgomery has spent decades observing animals up close, from octopuses and turtles to pigs, dogs, and wild creatures encountered briefly in the field. Her work invites readers into relationships with other species not as abstractions, but as individuals, each with their own ways of being in the world.

In this conversation with Bioneers, Montgomery reflects on how humans lose — and can relearn — that way of seeing; what animals have taught her about empathy, identity, and attention; and why cultivating curiosity and care across species may be one of the most important practices of our time.

Bioneers: So much of your work invites readers to see animals as individuals, not abstractions. How did that way of seeing begin for you, and how has it evolved over time?

Sy Montgomery: I think most of us begin life seeing animals as individuals. As children, that comes naturally. But somewhere along the way, many adults lose that way of seeing. For a long time, science itself reinforced the idea that an animal was simply a representative of its species, not a unique being. Behavioral research used to treat animals that way, and frankly, I think the researchers themselves knew it was nonsense.

That began to change in a very visible way when Jane Goodall went into the field in 1960 and refused to number the chimpanzees she studied. She named them. She recognized immediately that each one had a distinct personality and history. Louis Leakey chose Goodall deliberately — she wasn’t trained as a scientist, and he wanted someone who might see something new. And she did. Today, especially in field biology, the first thing you’re taught is to figure out who’s who. Otherwise, nothing you observe will make sense.

In that regard, I don’t think I have changed very much since I was a child. I’ve always believed animals are individuals. What can be challenging is recognizing individuality in species that are very unlike us — reptiles, or marine invertebrates, for example. But once you pay attention, it becomes undeniable. Every octopus I’ve met has had a completely distinct personality. The same is true of turtles.

There’s nothing special about me in being able to see this. If I can do it, anyone can.

Sirocco the kakapo, an endangered flightless parrot in New Zealand, attempts to copulate with Sy’s head. Photo by Nic Bishop.

Bioneers: Why do you think we lose that way of seeing as adults? What do we gain — or lose — by that shift?

Sy: I think one reason is that it becomes much easier to experiment on animals, kill them, and eat them if we pretend they don’t have thoughts, feelings, or individual lives. There’s a real incentive to strip away individuality and dignity, because acknowledging it would demand responsibility.

A lot of this traces back to René Descartes and the idea that only humans think: I think, therefore I am. That notion flies in the face of both evolution and common sense. Evolution shows us that thinking, remembering, imagining the future, and feeling emotions all offer adaptive advantages. If loving your offspring or your mate helps a species survive, why would those capacities suddenly appear in only one species? That would be absurd.

Even the way we talk about evolution gets this wrong. We still call it a “theory,” though it’s long been proven fact. And evolution tells us we are connected — emotionally, cognitively, biologically. Our science says that. And so do our sacred stories. Every creation story, from every culture and religion, tells us that we are part of a family. We are related. We are similar. And we need one another.

When we forget that, when we deny kinship, we lose not just empathy for other species, but something essential about ourselves.

Bioneers: Have you ever encountered animals you thought didn’t show signs of empathy?

Sy Montgomery: Yes, but I think it’s important to remember that not seeing something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It often just means we haven’t learned how to look yet.

For a long time, people used “bird brain” as an insult, assuming birds were stupid. What that really reflected was our own failure to recognize the complexity and power of a bird’s intelligence. Today, we know that birds like parrots and crows are extraordinarily smart. They make and use tools, plan for the future, and remember past events. Intelligence doesn’t have to look like ours to be real.

The same is true when we talk about empathy. When we don’t recognize it in an animal, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist — it may just be expressed in a way we don’t yet understand. Size doesn’t tell us much, either. A small brain can be incredibly powerful, and intelligence can be organized in ways that challenge our assumptions altogether.

Take octopuses. Their brains don’t resemble human brains at all. You wouldn’t even recognize the structure as a brain if you were looking for something familiar. And yet they are astonishingly intelligent. Or consider sea urchins. They don’t have a brain in the way we define one, but increasingly scientists are suggesting that they are a brain — that their entire bodies process information in a distributed way, rather than in a single centralized organ.

These discoveries invite us to rethink what a “brain” even is, and what cognition can look like. Sea urchins don’t have eyes, yet they can perceive color, sometimes in ways we can’t. Octopuses can change color instantly to match their surroundings, even though they don’t have color receptors in their eyes. For years, people assumed they were colorblind. The truth was that we simply hadn’t figured out how they were seeing.

The lesson, again and again, is to keep looking. To stay curious. 

Bioneers: Is there an animal encounter that truly surprised you? Something that defied your expectations?

Sy: My first encounter with Athena, a Giant Pacific octopus, in March of 2011 completely surprised me. I didn’t know what to expect, but one thing I did not expect was for her to seem clearly excited to see me … clearly curious. She looked me in the eye. She reached out and tried to touch me.

That moment knocked me off my feet.

Octopuses are so radically different from us. Half a billion years of evolution separate humans and octopuses. I didn’t expect to be able to read her at all. These are powerful, venomous animals, and yet I never felt fear. I also never felt aggression from her. Even when octopuses grab you, which they sometimes do, it has never felt threatening to me.

What surprised me most was realizing, in real time, that I could understand her intentions. I knew when she was curious. I knew when she was calm. I knew when she was engaged. And I hadn’t gone into that encounter expecting any of that. So I know I wasn’t projecting my own feelings onto her. I simply didn’t anticipate that kind of connection was possible.

To be seen, and to see in return, across such an immense evolutionary distance was thrilling. It changed my understanding of what relationships across species can look like. 

Enjoying the company of a pinktoe tarantula at the spider lab of Sam Marshall. Photo by Sam Marshall.

Bioneers: Of all your immersive encounters, is there one animal experience that most changed how you understand yourself as a human?

Sy: I’m not sure I understand myself as a human at all. I didn’t really identify as human when I was a child—I thought I was a horse for a while. My pediatrician told my mother I’d grow out of it, and I did … when I realized I was actually a dog.

I joke about that, but there’s something sincere in it. Animals have always felt like my teachers. In How to Be a Good Creature, which is a memoir told through thirteen animals, I was forced to look closely at what each of those beings showed me about how to live. Animals are already perfect at being what they are. We’re the ones who struggle.

My first dog, Molly, taught me what I wanted to do with my life. She was my older sister, even though technically I was older. I wanted to go into the woods with her and learn how to understand the world the way wild animals do. In many ways, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Other animals have taught me different lessons. Christopher Hogwood, our pig — who lived to be fourteen and died peacefully in his sleep — was a profound teacher. But it isn’t only the animals who live with us who shape us. Sometimes it’s a brief, unexpected encounter in the field that opens a door and changes how you see everything.

What animals have given me, above all, is a way to practice openness and compassion. Not just toward other species, but toward other humans as well. In a time when it’s easy to dismiss people who think differently as evil or stupid, animals invite us to do something harder: to try to understand another being on their own terms.

If you can stretch your imagination enough to consider the inner life of an octopus — an animal with nine brains that can taste and see with its skin — you learn how to put yourself into another way of being. It’s a kind of training in perspective-taking. And it’s a voyage I would recommend to anyone.

Bioneers: In your writing, you balance scientific rigor with deep emotional presence. How do you navigate that line?

Sy: I’m trained first as a journalist, and one of the earliest lessons you learn in journalism is to trust your reader. You don’t try to shove your opinion down someone’s throat. You show them what happened, and you let them come to their own understanding.

So I try to describe what the animal did, as clearly and accurately as I can. And I can also tell the reader how I felt when that animal did it. But I don’t want to draw the conclusion for them. I don’t want to force my feelings onto the reader. I want them with me on the journey and then arriving at their own meaning.

That approach requires restraint. It’s tempting, especially when you care deeply, to tell people what they should think. But I believe readers are far more powerful than that. If you trust them, they’ll often come to insights that are richer and more lasting than anything you could dictate.

My goal is to create the conditions for connection — to open a space where the reader can encounter another being, and then decide for themselves what that encounter means.

Sy exploring the rainforest canopy of Amazonian Peru. Photo by Dave Meyer.

Bioneers: What feels most important to offer young readers right now, especially amid ecological uncertainty?

Sy: I don’t think of children as the leaders of tomorrow. I think they’re the leaders of today. Kids have an enormous influence, not just on their own futures, but on how their families live and even how they vote.

Years ago, a friend of mine who trained educators told me about a study showing that most conservation and environmental information reaching parents didn’t come from newspapers or the internet. It came from their kids. Children go home and say things like, “We shouldn’t kill possums; they eat ticks,” or “We need to stop using plastic bags because they hurt sea turtles.” Kids are powerful messengers.

They also have a natural affinity for the living world. Why wouldn’t they? Humans were hunter-gatherers until very recently, and paying attention to the natural world was once essential to survival. If we nurture that attentiveness instead of dismissing it, kids can become agents of real change.

Every child has some kind of power. Every child has something they love and some talent they can bring to it. What we need to offer them is the truth: knowledge is power, and love is power.

Bioneers: What do you think humans most misunderstand about other species or about our place among them?

Sy: I think we tend to fall into false binaries. Either we assume other species are so unlike us that they fall outside our sphere of care, or we expect them to be so much like us that when we notice a difference, we don’t know what to do with it.

I think the truth is far more interesting. We need to celebrate both our sameness and our difference. I love the ways I’m different from my dog. He can hear things I can’t hear, see in the dark, run faster than I ever could, and experience the world through scent in ways I can barely imagine. That’s a whole sensory universe I’ll never inhabit, and I find that thrilling.

At the same time, there are ways we clearly connect. He understands when I’m happy or sad. He loves affection. I love affection. That shared emotional ground matters, too.

It’s not so different from our relationships with other humans. You don’t want to spend your life in a hall of mirrors with people exactly like you. Difference is part of the joy. But neither do you want to be so alien to one another that connection becomes impossible.

When we approach other species with that mindset — curious, open, and willing to be surprised — relationship becomes a source of delight rather than domination. And that shift changes everything.

The post To Be Seen by an Octopus: Sy Montgomery on Attention and Kinship appeared first on Bioneers.

Though there are sections of border wall that have been in place for decades, the desire of the current regime to build a complete wall which would stretch nearly 2000 miles from the Pacific Ocean in California to the Gulf of Mexico in Texas is unprecedented. If successful, such a wall would mark the first time in human history that a continent has been cut in half by a man-made structure.

The post Resistance Grows as Border Wall Construction Threatens Jaguars appeared first on CELDF - Community Rights Pioneers - Protecting Nature and Communities.

Headline News:

• “Experts Reveal Stunning Change In Global Energy” • Energy think tank Ember has published positive new data about wind and solar energy. According to reporting by Electrek, renewable energy is growing so much that it is actually outpacing global electricity demand. And dirty power usage is predicted to remain flat. [The Cool Down]

Wind turbines (Serge Le Strat, Unsplash, cropped)

• “EU Leaders Talk Coordination Over Greenland As Trump Readies For Davos Meetings” • The showdown between the US and its NATO allies over Greenland looks set to be a dominant topic as leaders gather at this week’s World Economic Forum event in Davos. President Donald Trump says US ownership of the island is “imperative.” [ABC News]
• “The World Has Entered An Era Of ‘Global Water Bankruptcy’, UN Warns. What Does It Mean?” • A report from the United Nations University warns that pollution, soil degradation, water overallocation, groundwater depletion, and deforestation have combined with global heating to cause “irreversible damage” to the planet’s water supply. [Euronews]
• “(Another) Record Month For EV Sales In China! ” • Plugins scored another million-plus sales in December, reaching a record 1.34 million units. The overall market was 2.26 million units, down a harsh 14% YOY, so the plugin vehicles’ market share was 59%, while full battery EVs reached a 35% share. The final 2025 plugin share was 54%. [CleanTechnica]
• “NNG Launches Major Seabird Monitoring Studies” •  The Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farm is launching one of the most comprehensive seabird and marine monitoring studies in Scotland to gather continuous data on how key bird species behave around operational turbines. The study has a focus on the 450-MW project itself. [reNews]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

01-26 * 13:00 - AT meeting (Bea)

01-29 * 13:00 - FT Open forum (Bea)

02-02 * 13:00 - Strategy meeting for Global Alliance of RD (Bea)

02-04 * 13:00 - Radical Democracy TG meeting (Bea)

02-14 * 16:00 - Ivan Illich evento en Oaxaca (Bea)

02-20 * 13:00 - Learning and Education Group meeting (Bea)

Did climate change wipe out the Galápagos damselfish (Azurina eupalama)?

This once-common, reef-dwelling fish — described by the Galápagos Conservancy as a “shimmering jewel” — hasn’t been seen since the 1982-1983 El Niño Southern Oscillation, which devastated the ecology around the Galápagos. Fueled by climate change, the weather event brought months of warm water to the normally cooler areas where the fish lived and decreased supplies of the plankton they depended on for food.

By the time weather conditions returned to normal, the damselfish was nowhere to be found.

Engraving of the Galápagos damselfish, originally published by Heller & Snodgrass (1903).

Divers have spent the past 40 years looking for the fish, to no avail. A 2025 paper published in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation concluded that the species should now be considered “likely extinct,” although it encourages ongoing environmental DNA sampling just in case the animal persists.

In a press release about this research, the Conservancy wrote that simply mourning this species is not enough. “Every species lost is a page torn from the book of life. But there’s still time to write a different ending. Let this story move us. Let it motivate us. Because we can still make a difference — if we choose to act.”

Sadly the Galápagos damselfish is not an isolated story. This past year scientists announced many other species we appear to have lost. Their stories are often haunting, but they can motivate us to learn from our mistakes, take advantage of conservation opportunities, and act to prevent further erosions of the natural world.

Here are the stories of the past year, drawn from scientific papers, media reports, and the IUCN Red List.

Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura)

This tiny but loud species — “its distinctive shrill squeaks could be heard all around as one stood quietly in the rainforest,” according to a 2004 species recovery plan — was last seen in 1985, although its final days really began in the first decade of the 20th century, when humans carried rats (and the rats carried diseases) to Christmas Island. That was just the first blow, though. After that came nonnative yellow crazy ants, cats, and other predators. Then came roads, habitat loss, and — finally — the arrival of yet one more nonnative predator, common wolf snakes, in the 1980s. The last two known shrews were found mid-decade; they died soon after, and the species has long been feared extinct. Last year the IUCN calculated the slim possibility of their continued survival and made it official.

The 52-square-mile Christmas Island — a territory of Australia — may not be very big, but it looms large in the extinction crisis. Isolated from other land masses by hundreds of miles of ocean, dozens of unique species had the opportunity to evolve there. That worked just fine until humans arrived and knocked the delicate system out of whack. This shrew is at least the fourth extinction of the island’s unique species. Let’s hope it’s the last.

 

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Mimo jiaoyue

A paper published in February 2025 described this freshwater mussel for the first time … and declared its possible extinction. The authors based its name on “an ancient Chinese term for the moon, used to describe the shell’s shape as being as round as the bright moon in the night sky.” The species was native to Lake Fuxian in China, but the paper points out that the lake is highly polluted, with low levels of dissolved oxygen, and the shoreline has been destroyed by development. The paper reports that no living specimens have been found and pollution levels suggest it’s “highly unlikely that any surviving populations remain.” (A 2021 paper identified a host of threats to this lake, including “rural domestic pollution, farmland runoff pollution, urban domestic pollution, phosphorous chemical pollution, and tourism pollution.”)

And this species may not have been the only one to disappear from the lake: Freshwater mussels rely on specific fish species to host their larvae, and the authors suggest that M. jiaoyue’s unidentified host species may have also gone extinct.

Dryadobates erythropus

Sometimes we find evidence of extinction not in the wild but in museums or other scientific collections. That’s the case with this 14-millimeter (.55 inches) frog, described by researchers as a new species based on a “badly desiccated and extremely fragile” specimen that had been collected by pioneering herpetologist Doris Cochran in Brazil in 1963 (and stored at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, ever since).

Photo: Taran Grant

The authors noted that the site where the original specimen was collected “has been transformed into a highly developed residential and commercial area lacking suitable habitat,” so it seems unlikely the frog persists in the wild.

Like other so-called “rocket frogs,” this species had a thin, streamlined body, a pointed face, and probably the ability to leap many times its body length. Too bad they couldn’t jump out of the way of humanity.

Ngutu kākā (Clianthus puniceus)

This shrub with delightful red flower clusters hails from New Zealand’s North Island, where it hasn’t been seen in the wild since 2015, although it still exists in a handful of herbariums. The reasons for its disappearance remain unclear, but it seems likely to have fallen prey to nonnative herbivores such as feral goats, red deer, and snails. Extensive surveys have failed to turn up any free-growing populations, so the IUCN this year assessed the plant as “extinct in the wild.”

A related species, C. maximus, persists in the wild — barely — with about 150 known plants (a number New Zealand’s Department of Conservation is actively working to increase). Both species are collectively known as “Kākābeak” because their flowers are shaped like the beak of the kākā parrot (Nestor meridionalis).

 

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Slender-billed curlew (Numenius tenuirostris)

This once-wide-ranging bird led our annual extinction list in 2024 after a scientific paper declared it lost due to overhunting and habitat loss. This year the IUCN used the paper as the basis for wider scientific consensus and similarly listed the species as extinct.

1905 illustration of slender-billed curlews, courtesy Biodiversity Heritage Library

Eugenia acutissima

This Cuban plant hasn’t been seen since 1952 and probably fell victim to agricultural development; it was only observed by scientists once. In 2025 the IUCN declared it extinct.

Delissea sinuata

Native to the Waianae Mountains of Oʻahu, this plant hasn’t been seen since 1937. Nonnative species have heavily degraded its former habitat — another example of why Hawai‘i is often referred to as the “extinction capital of the world.” It would be easy to spot if it still existed, because it grew up to four feet high and bore striking purple berries.

Diospyros angulata

Proof that science takes its time: This plant from the island of Mauritius (home of the infamously extinct dodo) was last seen in 1851. The IUCN finally published an assessment identifying the species as extinct in 2025. The likely causes of its extinction include logging, grazing, soil erosion, and competition from nonnative plants and animals.

Syzygium ampliflorum

This tree grew on an active volcano — Mount Galunggung in Java, Indonesia — which last erupted over a nine-month period beginning Oct. 8, 1982. The eruption killed 2,000 people, wiped out 88 villages, and presumably caused this plant’s extinction — that is, if it hadn’t already been killed off during earlier eruptions in 1894 and 1918. An expedition in January 2025 failed to turn up signs of this plant’s existence, and a paper published in September suggested it should now be considered possibly extinct. If so, that would make it one of the few extinctions on this list not directly linked to human activity.

Brunoniella neocaledonica

This small, flowering herb from New Caledonia was only documented twice, in 1967 and 1968. Its only habitat has suffered from frequent fires and grazing from nonnative Rusa deer. The IUCN assessed it as extinct in 2022 but only published that in 2025.

Another rarely documented New Caledonian herb — Pytinicarpa tonitrui — faced the same threats and has also been declared extinct.

Kākāpō parasites

New Zealand’s critically endangered kākāpō parrots (one of our species to watch in 2026) nearly went extinct a few decades ago. Conservationists saved the species by moving the last of these flightless birds to safe, predator-free islands. They’ve been doing fairly well ever since and may experience a baby boom in the year ahead, but they’ve lost something else along the way: their parasites. A study published this past July found more than 80% of the parasite species previously associated with kākāpō prior to the 1990s have disappeared. Of the 16 parasites the researchers identified, only three remain on the birds.

Sirocco, the famous kakapo, pokes out of the brush in 2012. Photo: New Zealand Department of Conservation

The paper suggests that four of these parasites were associated exclusively with kākāpō and, with no other species to host them, have gone extinct.

This might seem like a “no big whoop” deal, but parasites rarely deserve their bad reputation. They often play important ecological roles — research suggests they can help keep our immune systems healthy and may even protect us from any new, potentially more destructive parasites that arrive.

Their disappearance, meanwhile, is a sign that natural systems are deeply disturbed — and if a habitat can’t support a parasite, what does that mean for the fate of the host species?

A press release about this research gives us further food for thought. It reminds us that parasites live on a small proportion of the population of their host species, so when the bigger species become endangered, the parasites are likely to go extinct faster than the hosts (a process called secondary extinction or coextinction). This means parasite declines could be considered an early warning system and tip us off to problems in the hosts.

At the same time, the paper warns that we may have underestimated the rate of parasite extinction worldwide and failed to account for them in our documentation of disappearing species. Case in point: What if every extinction announced this year also involved the extinction of one or two parasite species?

So let’s spare a moment to think about these lost species — and maybe give those that remain a little extra attention and appreciation.

Madeiran large white (Pieris wollastoni)

This striking, 2-inch butterfly once flew in Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, but hasn’t been seen since 1986. The IUCN SSC Butterfly Specialist Group assessed it as extinct in 2023, but that wasn’t published to the IUCN Red List until last year. The cause of its extinction remains unclear, but possible factors include pesticides, a virus, or the decline of the plants the butterflies’ larvae depended on.

Conus lugubris

This poor little cone snail was once abundant on the Cape Verde Islands, which have since become a tourist mecca. Rapid coastal development since the late 1980s has destroyed the snails’ habitat and the species is now presumed extinct.

Leptaxis vetusta

This Portuguese land snail was scientifically described in 1857 based on a fossil shell and has never been observed alive. The IUCN this past year assessed it as extinct.

Mastigodiaptomus galapagoensis

This small copepod (a type of crustacean) lived until recently in El Junco, a high-elevation freshwater crater lake on San Cristóbal island in the Galápagos that has no naturally occurring fish. An illegal attempt to establish a tilapia fishery there in 2005 or 2006 devastated the lake’s ecology. By the time efforts to eradicate the nonnative fish began in 2008, the lake held an estimated 40,000 tilapia. Native invertebrates didn’t stand a chance. A paper published in 2021 suggested this had caused an extinction; the IUCN this year gave broader consensus to that sad reality.

Snowy owls (Bubo scandiacus) in Sweden

Sometimes species disappear on the regional level, which is known as extirpation rather than extinction. This year the conservation organization BirdLife declared snowy owls regionally extinct in Sweden, a decade after the last sign of the birds breeding in that country.

BirdLife says this should serve as a warning for all northern countries in which snowy owls still roam, where climate change is rapidly altering ecosystems and making them less hospitable to these iconic birds (and so many other species in the process).

Thaumastus teixeirensis

Another land snail, this time from Brazil. Scientists have previously identified dozens of other species in this genus, but this one slipped by until a paper published this past year. Evidence of the species emerged from sambaquis — shell mounds left as monuments by prehistoric people. Researchers found the shells for this new species in these mounds and wrote that “efforts to find similar living specimens, or even empty shells, in that region were fruitless, strongly suggesting that the species is currently extinct.”

Acropora corals

Not an extinction, and not an extirpation, but about as close as you can get: A paper published this past October warned that an “acute heating event” along the Florida Keys in 2023 killed between 97.8% and 100% of elkhorn (Acropora palmata) and staghorn (A. cervicornis) coral colonies. So many corals died that further reproduction remains unlikely, leaving the species in this area “functionally extinct.” This is climate change in a nutshell, folks.

Elkhorn coral spawning. Photo: Brett Seymore/National Park Service

Several Italian plant species

A massive study of the vascular plants of Italy (i.e., most plants other than mosses and the like) reassessed 628 species, resulting in conservation status updates for 44% of them. The 100-plus authors fanned out across the country and found that the fate of 57 species has improved. But they also found that 176 species fared worse than their previous assessments, and the researchers confirmed several regional and national extinctions, mostly in aquatic habitats.

Among the losses:

• • Atriplex mollis in Sardegna
  • Coleanthus subtilis in Trentino-Alto Adige
  • Taraxacum pauckertianum in Toscana
  • Aldrovanda vesiculosa all over Italy
  • Mentha cervina in Abruzzo
  • Nuphar lutea and Nymphaea alba in Sicilia
  • Utricularia minor and vulgaris in Toscana
  • Potamogeton gramineus and Sonchus palustris in Veneto
  • Crucianella maritima in Calabria
  • Juniperus sabina in the Marche

Other countries would do well to follow the lead of these Italian botanists. As they write in the paper, “This research also underscores the importance of botanical collections and historical records to reconstruct the history, dynamics, and current distribution of plant species, and addresses challenges such as limited access to the collections. This study is not only a milestone in Italian floristics but also provides a replicable methodology for updating national floras globally.”

Six bandicoots

These long-unseen (and in some cases newly identified) Australian marsupials got their first — and last —entries on the IUCN Red List this past year when all were listed as extinct species:

• • Northern pig-footed bandicoot or Yirratji (Chaeropus yirratji) and southern pig-footed bandicoot (C. ecaudatus) — Previously considered one species, they were reassessed as two species in 2019 using a combination of fossil records, Aboriginal oral accounts, bones, and taxidermied specimens. Unseen since the 1950s and 1930s, respectively, the two bandicoots probably disappeared due to introduced predators (like cats and foxes), changes in fire regimes instituted by European settlers, and habitat degradation by livestock. The rest of the bandicoots on this list faced similar stories.
  • Nullarbor barred or butterfly bandicoot (Perameles papillon) — Last seen alive in 1928 and identified as their own species in 2018 based on museum specimens. The only known photos of this species were rediscovered in 2025.
  • South-eastern striped or southern barred bandicoot (Perameles notina) — Last seen in the mid-19th century.
  • Liverpool Plains striped bandicoot (Perameles fasciata) and southwestern barred bandicoot or Marl (P. myosuros) — Previously considered subspecies, these bandicoots were elevated to full species status in research published in 2018. They were last seen in 1846 and 1907, respectively, and cats once again get the blame for most of their declines.

Three Caribbean lizards

A recent study took a deep dive into the DNA of forest lizards from the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Hispaniola and shook things up quite a bit, ultimately defining 35 new species — including one that lives near Goldeneye, Jamaica, where author Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels (they of course named the species Celestus jamesbondi). In the process they declared the Altagracia giant forest lizard (Caribicus anelpistus) and yellow giant forest lizard (Celestus occiduus) “critically endangered (possibly extinct)” (assessments already made by the IUCN Red List under different common names) and added a newly identified species, the black giant forest lizard (Celestus macrolepis), to the list of lost species.

Armeria maritima

An odd case to wrap up this list: Botanists considered this species “extinct in the wild,” with the last living samples growing at Utrecht University Botanic Gardens in the Netherlands. But recent DNA tests of the living plant and 19th-century specimens showed that the gardens actually held a hybrid of two different Armeria species. That allowed them to declare that Armeria arcuate is truly extinct — but at the same time it illustrated the value of botanical gardens and herbarium collections, which can still provide critical scientific evidence even if the samples are decades or centuries old. Many herbarium collections themselves face extinction in an age of scientific budget cuts, so that’s an important message we’d do well to take to heart.

Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator:

The Curlew, the Cactus, and the Obliterated Whitefish: The Species We Lost in 2024

The post Rocket Frog, Damselfish, and Bandicoots: The Species Declared Extinct in 2025 appeared first on The Revelator.

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Do solar panels release more emissions than burning fossil fuels?

Solar panels produce far less emissions than coal or natural gas.

“Lifecycle emissions” counts all aspects of raw materials, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and disposal. A major National Renewable Energy Laboratory review of thousands of studies found that while some emissions are generated when solar panels are manufactured and shipped, their lifetime emissions are much lower than fossil fuels. Coal’s lifecycle climate pollution is about 23 times higher than solar power, and natural gas about 11 times higher.

Solar panels also “pay back” their upfront emissions within a few years of operation, offsetting emissions from their manufacture. Since modern panels often last 30 years or more, they will continue to provide decades of low-emissions electricity after their payback..

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

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Sources

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electricity Generation: Update

IPCC Technology-specific Cost and Performance Parameters

US Department of Energy End-of-Life Management for Solar Photovoltaics

International Journal of Advanced Research in Science, Communication and Technology Solar Panel Heat Emission and its Environmental Impact

Columbia Law School Sabin Center for Climate Change Law Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles

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Headline News:

• “EU Leaders Meet As Trump Demands ‘Complete And Total Control’ Of Greenland” • The leaders of all 27 EU nations will meet this week. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” Trump wrote to the Norwegian prime minister. [ABC News]

President Trump (White House photo)

• “Breaking Down Trump’s Argument For Acquiring Greenland” • President Trump has stepped up his pressure campaign to take Greenland, the Arctic island and semi-autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, citing US national security needs. He has not ruled out taking it by military force over the objections of Greenlanders and the Danes. [ABC News]
• “In Sweden, Organic Steel Production Is Already In Progress” • The blast furnaces of Luleå, Sweden, are saying goodbye to fossil fuels. SSAB, the country’s leading steel mill, is pivoting its output to produce environmentally friendly, so-called ‘green steel’, free of fossil fuels. “We will reduce the total CO₂ amount emitted to the atmosphere by 7% in Sweden.” [Euronews]
• “Octopus Energy Launches New ‘Groundbreaking’ Tariff Cutting Social Housing Energy Bills By Up To £200 ” • Millions of social housing tenants face some of the highest energy costs in the UK, with limited ability to cut bills through home upgrades such as solar panels. However a new tariff from Octopus Energy aims to change that. [GB News]
• “Trump Or No Trump, The US Solar Industry Had A $22.2 Billion Year In 2025” • Mercom Capital ran the numbers for 2025. It found that the solar sector “decreased 16% year-over-year in 2025, with $22.2 billion raised in 175 deals, compared to $26.3 billion in 157 deals in 2024.” Total value for the year was down, but deals for what is coming were up. [CleanTechnica]

For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

Community groups are stunned and outraged, vowing to ramp up pressure on the Cook Government after Western Australia’s EPA recommended the first fracking project in the state since Labor lifted the moratorium in 2019 be approved.

Much of central Queensland may be under floodwater but cattle farmer Patricia Goodwin feels like she has been left high and dry by Bowen Coking Coal.

WEAVING ALTERNATIVES #18: A periodical of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives Learning and EducationJanuary 2026 Editorial Note Dear Readers, We are delighted to share with you the 18th edition of the Periodical. In this edition, we turn attention to deliberations on learning and education drawing from the work of the Learning and Education Thematic Group. GTAalternativesweaversendorsersweaversendorsersGTAalternativesGTAalternativesalternativesGTAweaversGTAendorseralternativesGTAalternat…