Endangered Pokemon

[Palamon]

What Pokemon do you think could possibly be endangered in the Pokemon world? Besides ones that canonly endangered in lore like Farfetch'd and Lapras.

 

[Sheep]

Seel and Dewgong seem likely to me, for the same reasons sea lions are in real life. They mostly live in colder climates and I assume that's being affected by climate change in the Pokémon world as well as our world, plus they may not breed enough. Other things happen that make longterm survival hard too, like some babies not surviving to adulthood. They're generally not found in too many areas in each game and I consider them somewhat rare because of that. So it makes sense to me? :<

 

[Whiteeyes1989]

Huh Seel and Dewgong are actually rather rare. Not in many regions and in a very limited range of habitats in them AND have a low encounter rate.

Dunsparse is also quite rare, having an only 1% encounter rate.

Feebas is so rare they can be found in only 4 spots in one specific lake.

Incidentally Lapras aren't endangered anymore thanks to conservation efforts.

 

[ReKoil]

Given how you never find any of the starters in a region normally, roaming in the wild, I'd go with any of the starters.
Exception there being the gen 4 starters in Legends, but from what I've seen so far they're pretty dang rare.

And yet at the same time Pokemon professors can somehow afford to offer out three of them to any upstarting trainer at any time.... 🤔
I guess they've just always felt like a protected or possibly endangered species to me.

 

[Fairy]

There's no lore or canon evidence to support this but I just feel like Mamoswine would be an endangered species. Besides the fact that our irl equivalent Mammuthus primigenius is extinct today, that is. I'd also imagine a good portion of your more common Water types (Goldeen, Remoraid, Lumineon, Wishiwashi, etc) would be over fished as well too, though perhaps not to the point of being critically endangered.

 

[Palamon]

Given how you never find any of the starters in a region normally, roaming in the wild, I'd go with any of the starters.
Exception there being the gen 4 starters in Legends, but from what I've seen so far they're pretty dang rare.

And yet at the same time Pokemon professors can somehow afford to offer out three of them to any upstarting trainer at any time.... 🤔
I guess they've just always felt like a protected or possibly endangered species to me.

Considering most starter Pokemon are more likely to be male than female, I definitely agree that this could be the case that starters are both a protected group of Pokemon as well as endangered.

I'm seeing a lot of Ice Type Pokemon mentioned in this thread. I wonder if just Ice type in general is an endangered type? After all, there's so few of them that even exist, at 51, so it's the rarest type.

 

[Whiteeyes1989]

They also tend to have very limited distribution, even in the regions where they are found. But it might be harsh to call them endangered as they aren't necessarily rare, just of limited geographic scope. To be a contender you need a low rate of appearance and a very limited geographic distribution, like a certain ice-cube penguin...

 

[Orion☆]

One example I don't see brought up often is Raichu. It's only available in the wild in Kanto (in Gen I only) and Galar (DLC only), and then there's its Ultra Moon Dex entry: "Because so many Trainers like the way Pikachu looks, you don't see this Pokémon very often." You read that well; so many Trainers have gotten used to not evolving their Pikachu that Raichu is well on its way to becoming an endangered Pokémon. If I lived in the Pokémon world, I'd definitely champion efforts to raise awareness of the existence of Raichu, because to me, it's honestly so much better than Pikachu - especially the Kantonian variant! 🥺💖

Another example, though far more positive, is the Kantonian variant of Muk. Again, the S/M/US/UM Dex entries for this variant highlight that pools of dirt had to be made to preserve this Pokémon because the region had become so much cleaner that it was impossible for them to thrive. Considering how the Alolan variant actually helps maintain a cleaner environment... I do wonder why the Kantonian variant would be preserved if not as an object of study.

 

[Shinygir]

I'd say fossil Pokemon. Your literally bring them back from extinction and based on sword and shield the fossil needs to be a complete skeleton even if it's a skeleton of two different Pokemon.

 

[Roni]

hey mostly live in colder climates and I assume that's being affected by climate change in the Pokémon world as well as our world, plus they may not breed enough.

Is there even climate change in the Pokemon world? In the games at least there's probably only like 1 or 2 factories in each region, and rarely a need for cars/boats/planes since Pokemon can be used as transport (Fly/Surf etc etc)

Or maybe it's been canon for a while now and I'm just too outdated lol

 

[Orion☆]

Is there even climate change in the Pokemon world? In the games at least there's probably only like 1 or 2 factories in each region, and rarely a need for cars/boats/planes since Pokemon can be used as transport (Fly/Surf etc etc)

Or maybe it's been canon for a while now and I'm just too outdated lol

If there is climate change, it's more akin to a natural cycle than anthropogenic. In fact, as I mentioned before, Kantonian Grimer and Muk are going extinct precisely because efforts to clean up the environment are going well, and I assume that might eventually also be the case with Kantonian Weezing if Galarian Weezing is any indication.

Then again... someone else here brought up the fact that Ice-types might be an endangered type as a whole, so global warming also happening in the Pokémon world is not out of the realm of possibility - whatever the root cause is.

 

[KOZSTAR]

I'm surprised Avalugg even made it to late 2013, but it's probably gonna go extinct soon.

 

[Whiteeyes1989]

Okay again stop saying Ice Types are endangered just because they only live in cold climates. There are artic zones in the UK and France in the Pokemon world! They aren't facing global warming in any sense of the word. If anything, they're facing an oncoming ice age. Wide distribution is not an indication of population health, just adaptability to a large number of environments. A good number of widely distributed species over the years have gone extinct IRL while many species that live in a limited geographic area are thriving just fine. Ring-tailed lemurs for example only live on one island (Madagascar) but are thriving enough that they outnumber all 9 species of giraffe combined, spread over 13 different countries. Distributional range has nothing to do with populations.

I'd say that in order to qualify for endangered status appearance rate is the key factor. It needs to be combined with limited distribution (regions/routes) to indicate potential threatened or endangered status. And it needs to be consistent. A Pokemon with a 10% appearance rate on one route on one region but a 15% rate in three routes in another just means that the pokemon is better adapted to living in region B than A and as such has a much more sizable and stable global population than sample A indicates. 10% is also what I consider to be the highest percentage viable for arguments of threatened or endangered status. I also think you have to consider the evolution line as a whole. Fearrow may have a very low appearance rate in the wilds, but Spearrow are very common. End result? The Population is fine, just not a lot of evolving in the wild.