The green sea turtle is no longer endangered

For most of the last half century, the green sea turtle has been a symbol of what we stand to lose. In October 2025 it became something rarer: a symbol of what patience can win back. The IUCN moved the species from Endangered all the way to Least Concern, skipping two rungs of the extinction ladder in a single assessment, on the back of a 28 percent rise in the global nesting population since the 1970s.

How we know

The reclassification is the work of the IUCN Red List, the world's most authoritative record of extinction risk, drawing on decades of nesting counts from beaches around the world. The recovery itself is the sum of unglamorous, long running work: protecting nesting beaches, banning the trade in turtle shell and meat, and fitting fishing gear with escape hatches so fewer turtles drown as bycatch. In the Seychelles, the number of eggs laid each year has risen roughly fivefold.

Why it matters

Green turtles graze seagrass meadows that store carbon and shelter young fish, so their recovery ripples outward through whole coastal ecosystems. Four of the five largest regional populations are now growing. The lesson is simple and encouraging: give a long lived animal room and time, and it often takes them.