The species extinction tile on Trashed.Earth does not track confirmed extinctions in real time. Nobody is logging every loss as it happens. Instead, the counter applies a published annual extinction rate and spreads it evenly across the year so the number climbs from zero on 1 January.
How the counter works
The site uses a simple year-to-date calculation:
- Start with an estimated rate of 150 species lost per day.
- Convert that to an annual rate: 150 × 365.25 ≈ 54,800 species per year.
- Measure how much of the current calendar year has elapsed.
- Display that fraction of the annual total, updating continuously.
So on 1 July you would see roughly half of 54,800 — not because we know exactly how many species have vanished since January, but because the model assumes losses are spread evenly through the year.
This is the same approach used for every live stat on the site: a credible annual figure, turned into a ticking counter to make abstract scale feel immediate.
Where 150 per day comes from
The figure is a widely cited estimate, not a daily body count. It appears in United Nations and Convention on Biological Diversity messaging from the late 2000s, often alongside a range of 18,000 to 55,000 species per year — which works out to roughly 50 to 150 per day.
Those numbers usually come from habitat-loss models, not from a global register of extinct species. Researchers estimate how many species live in an area, then model how many are likely to disappear as forests, wetlands, and other habitats shrink. The math is informed by real ecology, but it projects losses that may not yet be confirmed in the field.
The IPBES Global Assessment (2019), which we cite as the anchor source for this stat, does not publish a precise “150 per day” figure. What IPBES does report is more cautious and, in many ways, more alarming in substance:
- Around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades.
- The current extinction rate is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years.
- The main drivers are land-use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species.
We use the 150-per-day rate because it sits at the upper end of the older UN/CBD range and matches the scale of crisis IPBES describes — while remaining within estimates that have circulated in policy and public discourse for years.
Why the real number is hard to know
Confirmed extinctions are far lower than modeled estimates. The IUCN Red List documents species that have been formally declared extinct, but that list is incomplete. Many species — especially insects, fungi, and deep-sea organisms — are undescribed or poorly studied. We often do not notice a species is gone until long after the last individual disappears.
Scientists also debate how to compare today’s losses to “background” extinction — the slow natural turnover that occurred before humans dominated the planet. Without agreement on how many species exist on Earth (estimates range from roughly 5 to 10 million for multi-cellular life alone), any daily number carries wide uncertainty.
Researchers including Nigel Stork have argued that some headline rates imply more extinctions over recent decades than the fossil and observational record supports. Others, using different models and time horizons, still find rates far above background levels. The honest summary: extinction is accelerating because of human activity, but pinning an exact daily count is scientifically contested.
Why we show it anyway
We display this estimate because the direction and magnitude matter more than false precision. Habitat destruction, overexploitation, pollution, and climate change are eliminating species faster than at any point in recent geological history. A counter cannot capture nuance, but it can communicate that the loss is continuous and largely driven by us.
Read this number as a modelled pace, not a verified tally. It is meant to prompt questions — about deforestation, fishing, emissions, and the species we never got to name — not to be quoted as an exact daily fact.