The world's largest penguins have joined the threatened species list.
Climate change has pushed emperor penguins, the largest species of penguin on Earth, onto the threatened species list, which means the iconic Antarctic birds are likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday , the USFWS officially declared the emperor penguin to be a threatened species and thus extended them protections under the ESA. Models suggest that, if humans manage to curb carbon emissions dramatically, global emperor penguin populations could dwindle by about 26% by 2050. But in a high-carbon-emission scenario, the populations could fall by more than 50% in the same time frame. Notably, these losses would not be dispersed evenly throughout the global A. forsteri population.