What "endangered" means
An animal is endangered when there are so few of them left, or so little of the place they need, that they could one day be gone forever. It does not mean the animal is gone. It means people have noticed, and many people are working to help.
Many animals are doing fine. The word is for the ones that are not, so that the world knows where to put its care first.
Peabody's words for it
Every animal page has a line that says how the animal is doing, in plain words. "Doing fine" means there are plenty and no sign of trouble. "Doing fine, for now" means it is fine today, but scientists are keeping an eye on it. "Needs help" means the animal could be in trouble if things keep going the way they are. "In danger" and "In great danger" mean there are few left, and the animal could be gone from the wild if nothing changes.
A few words are sadder, but they are true and they matter. "Only in zoos now" means that kind of animal no longer lives in the wild, but zoos still care for it. "Gone forever" means there are none left anywhere. "Not enough known" means scientists have not learned enough yet to say. If a page says "Not on the Red List", nobody has rated that animal yet.
Who decides?
Not Peabody. The ratings come from the Red List, kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a worldwide group that works to protect nature. For each animal, experts who study that kind of animal look at the evidence: how many there are, whether the number is going up or down, and how much safe space the animal has left.
They follow careful rules and write down their reasons so other scientists can check them. We copy the result onto the animal's page and say where we got it, the same way we do for every number.
Why animals end up on the ladder
Most of the time, the reason is a change to the animal's home. Forests are cut down, grassland is turned into farms and towns, rivers and seas get dirty, and the climate is changing. In some places animals have also been caught too often, for food or for parts such as ivory tusks.
None of this is a child's fault, and a child cannot fix it alone. But it helps to know, because the same people who changed things can help change them back.
What a child can do: learn and tell
Here is the only thing Peabody ever asks of you: learn, and tell. Read about an animal, learn one thing about how it lives, and tell someone: a grown-up, a friend, your class. That is a real way to help, because people look after what they know about.
You do not have to worry or fix anything. Animals have come back from trouble because people paid attention. The giant panda is one: scientists moved it up a step on the ladder, from "in danger" to "needs help", as its numbers grew.
For Big readers: the real Red List names
Each of Peabody's words matches a real Red List category. "Doing fine" is Least Concern, and "Doing fine, for now" is Near Threatened. "Needs help" is Vulnerable, "In danger" is Endangered, and "In great danger" is Critically Endangered. Those last three together are called Threatened. "Only in zoos now" is Extinct in the Wild, "Gone forever" is Extinct, and "Not enough known" is Data Deficient.
So the real word Endangered is only one step of the ladder, the middle one of the three Threatened steps. A page that says "Not on the Red List" means the animal is Not Assessed. That does not mean the animal is fine, only that nobody has put it through the rating yet.
Pick Big at the top to see the part for older readers.