You’ve heard it a million times: species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate thanks to fossil fueled climate change.
And yet this is totally false.
New research from the University of Arizona shows that extinction rates have actually *slowed* over the last 100 years! pic.twitter.com/DNhS2H6NrJ
— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) November 30, 2025
Extinction rates have slowed across many plant and animal groups, study shows –
A new study by Kristen Saban and John Wiens with the University of Arizona Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, however, revealed that over the last 500 years extinctions in plants, arthropods and land vertebrates peaked about 100 years ago and have declined since then. Furthermore, the researchers found that the past extinctions underlying these forecasts were mostly caused by invasive species on islands and are not the most important current threat, which is the destruction of natural habitats.
The paper argues that claims of a current mass extinction may rest on shaky assumptions when projecting data from past extinctions into the future, ignoring differences in factors driving extinctions in the past, the present and the future. Published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, the paper is the first study to analyze rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions across plant and animal species.
Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals – Here, we analyse rates and patterns of recent extinctions (last 500 years). Surprisingly, past extinctions did not strongly predict current risk among groups. Extinctions varied strongly among groups, and were most frequent among molluscs and some tetrapods, and relatively rare in plants and arthropods. Extinction rates have increased over the last five centuries, but generally declined in the last 100 years.
