Seven Migratory Species Are Now Recovering, a UN Report Confirms

Migratory animals — the whales, antelopes, birds and seals that cross borders, oceans and continents on their yearly journeys — face a tough world, and a UN report released on March 5, 2026 does not sugarcoat it. The interim update to the State of the World's Migratory Species found that 49% of populations covered by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) are in decline. Yet woven through the sobering data is a genuinely hopeful thread: seven CMS-listed species have improved enough to move to a lower extinction-risk category.

The named success stories are striking precisely because these animals were so close to being lost. The saiga antelope — a steppe-dwelling species with a distinctive trunk-like nose that had crashed by more than 95% — is recovering thanks to anti-poaching enforcement and habitat protection across Central Asia. The scimitar-horned oryx, once declared extinct in the wild, has been reintroduced to Chad, where hundreds now roam and breed. And the Mediterranean monk seal, one of the world's rarest marine mammals, is rebounding as coastal protections take hold.

“The interim update to the State of the World's Migratory Species found that 49% of populations covered by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) are in decline.”

What unites these comebacks is the very thing that makes migratory species so hard to protect: they cannot be saved by one country alone. An animal that breeds in one nation, refuels in another and winters in a third depends on coordinated action along the entire length of its route. The CMS framework exists precisely to broker that cooperation, and these recoveries show it can work when governments commit to shared protections, tackle obstacles along migration corridors and crack down on illegal killing.

The report is honest that the overall picture remains difficult, with 26 species moving the wrong way for every seven that improved. Migratory animals still face habitat loss, climate disruption, poaching and barriers across their paths. But the seven recoveries are not flukes — they are the measurable result of deliberate, sustained, international effort. They prove that even species written off as nearly gone can climb back when nations act together, offering a template for the many more that still need help.