How a Super El Niño Could Accelerate Biodiversity Loss

If you follow climate news, or just your local weather reports, you’ve probably seen warnings about El Niño, the weather pattern that occurs when parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean warm, disrupting rainfall patterns, winds, ocean conditions, and storm tracks across the globe. Forecasts suggest this event could become strong, prompting some observers to describe it as a “Super El Niño.” A strong El Niño could intensify climate extremes, placing already stressed wildlife and biodiverse ecosystems under even greater pressure. 

Much attention has focused on what a strong El Niño could mean for food security, disasters, and the economy. Biodiversity loss deserves the same urgency because healthy ecosystems support our global food systems, buffer communities from extreme weather, and sustain livelihoods for billions of people worldwide. Biodiversity is already declining because of land-use change, resource exploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. A strong El Niño could accelerate this decline by driving habitat loss and degradation, altering wildlife movement and behavior, and disrupting conservation efforts.

When Habitats Are Lost and Degraded

Habitat loss occurs when species lose the places they need to feed, breed, shelter, and find water, causing populations to shrink and making local extinctions more likely. Human land-use change remains the main driver of this process, especially through deforestation and agricultural conversion, but a strong El Niño can accelerate habitat loss by increasing the risk of extreme conditions like drought, storms, and flooding. 

In Indonesia, the 2015–2016 El Niño created unusually dry conditions that allowed fires to spread across drained and degraded peatlands in Sumatra and Kalimantan. These fires burned an estimated 2.6 million hectares of land, destroying forests, damaging peat-swamp habitats, and threatening wildlife that depends on these ecosystems, including endangered Bornean orangutans.

Even when habitats are not completely destroyed, extreme disturbances can degrade their quality and weaken their ability to provide food, shelter, and breeding conditions. For example, during marine heatwaves coral reefs expel the symbiotic algae that provide much of their energy, leading to bleaching, disease, and death.  As live coral declines, reefs lose the structure that fish, invertebrates, and other marine species rely on for shelter, feeding, and reproduction. 

In 2024, the Great Barrier Reef experienced its fifth mass bleaching event since 2016 and its most widespread on record, following what (at the time) was the fifth strongest El Niño ever recorded. 2025 surveys showing hard coral cover declines on nearly half of the 124 reefs assessed and losses reaching 70.8% on some reefs.

When Wildlife Shifts Their Behavior and Movement

A strong El Niño can also accelerate biodiversity loss by changing how wildlife behave under stress. When drought reduces food and water, animals may alter their daily behavior by feeding closer to people, entering farms more often, and taking greater risks to survive. 

In Zambia’s Luangwa River Basin and surrounding Eastern Region, the 2023–2024 El Niño-linked drought reduced food and water for people, livestock, and wildlife, which in turn increased confrontations between humans and wildlife. As food and water became scarcer, elephants and other wildlife moved closer to farms, settlements, and shared water points.  Resource Africa reported that elephants and hippos destroyed more than 200 hectares of crops in the Eastern Region. 

Along the U.S. West Coast, marine heatwaves and El Niño-linked warm years can compress cool, nutrient-rich upwelling ocean habitats, pushing humpback whales and their prey closer to nearshore fishing areas. This movement increases overlap with fixed fishing gear, including Dungeness crab pots and vertical lines. A recent study found that reported humpback whale entanglements were highest in years with limited suitable habitat and feeding grounds,  including spikes during the 2015–2016 marine heatwave and El Niño period and 31 confirmed humpback entanglements in 2024.

When Conservation Efforts Are Disrupted

A strong El Niño can intensify extreme storms and flooding, disrupting the infrastructures that conservation work depends on. Protected areas rely on well-maintained infrastructure and operational equipment, such as roads, fences, vehicles, communication systems, and monitoring tools. These resources help staff patrol boundaries, monitor conditions, care for wildlife, and respond quickly to threats.

In Kenya, the 2023–2024 El Niño likely contributed to the severe flooding in March–May 2024.. The floods affected more than 380,000 people, damaged more than 60 roads, destroyed bridges, and caused about $35 million in losses. These disruptions also reached conservation sites, including Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the flooding badly damaged perimeter and chimpanzee sanctuary fences, closed the chimpanzee facility for months, and increased wildlife-security and chimp-welfare costs.

Climate extremes around strong El Niño periods can also weaken conservation by stretching the institutions responsible for enforcement and land protection. When agencies are forced to prioritize emergency response, fewer resources may be available to prevent, monitor, and stop illegal burning, land clearing, and wildlife crime. 

Peru’s record 2024 wildfires show how quickly this strain can escalate when drought, human-started fires, and limited response capacity converge. The Global Wildfire Information System recorded about 10,400 fires in Peru in 2024, more than double the previous record. As fires spread across grasslands, dry forests, coastal areas, and the Amazon, limited capacity made it harder to contain the crisis and protect vulnerable ecosystems.

Toward More El Niño-Resilient Ecosystems

Building El Niño-resilient ecosystems starts with regenerative approaches that strengthen biodiversity, restore ecological function, and support the communities that depend on healthy landscapes. Regenerative agriculture can improve soil health by increasing organic matter, helping farms retain more water during drought, reducing erosion during floods, and supporting the soil biodiversity that sustains nutrient cycling, crop productivity, and climate resilience. Agroforestry builds on this resilience by bringing trees back into working landscapes, creating shade, habitat, and food sources for wildlife while helping farmers diversify their livelihoods through fruit, timber, fuelwood, fodder, and other tree-based products.

El Niño resilience also depends on stronger institutions and sustained investment for the people working closest to biodiversity loss. Frontline communities, Indigenous peoples, local leaders, conservation organizations, and protected-area agencies need resources before extreme conditions escalate into disasters. Funding should support early-warning systems, biodiversity monitoring, emergency planning, and rapid response, while long-term partnerships can help protect vulnerable species and ecosystems before losses become harder to reverse.

Reducing the pressures that make biodiversity vulnerable is just as important as preparing for El Niño itself. Ecosystems are better able to survive droughts, floods, fires, and marine heatwaves when species have enough food, clean water, breeding sites, shelter, and space to move before extreme conditions arrive. 

Cutting emissions can reduce the heat stress that forces plants and animals beyond their limits and makes recovery harder after an El Niño event. Protecting and reconnecting habitats can help wildlife move away from burned forests, dried wetlands, flooded nesting areas, or warming ocean zones. Managing invasive species can also reduce competition and predation, giving native plants and animals a better chance to recover when extreme events disrupt food webs.

Biodiversity is the foundation of global food, health, and economic systems, making its loss a direct threat to human security and well-being. A Super El Niño would intensify that threat by pushing already weakened ecosystems closer to their limits. The way forward is clear: scale regenerative systems that sustain biodiversity and livelihoods, support frontline communities and the institutions they depend on, and reduce the pressures pushing species and ecosystems toward collapse.

A Super El Niño should inspire a global response rooted in science, equity, and local action. Support EARTHDAY.ORG’s Canopy Tree Project to restore habitats, expand tree cover, and strengthen communities, and join The Great Global Cleanup to remove waste and plastic pollution from the ecosystems we all depend on.

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