How Does Climate Change Endangered Animals
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of anywhere else on Earth. Today the biggest threat facing walruses is the loss of stable sea ice due to climate change. As a result of less sea ice, walrus are changing their behavior.
Walruses feed on the ocean floor in the relatively shallow waters of the continental shelf, where the sea ice itself sustains a rich food web. Females will leave their young on the sea ice while they forage, then haul out to nurse their calves. The accelerating retreat of sea ice puts the newborns’ safe haven farther away from the mothers’ food—meaning longer, more exhausting swims for the mothers, and more time alone for the calves. Walrus are also seeking haul-outs on beaches, instead of ice, which puts them in closer proximity to sources of human disturbance. Walrus' are known to stampede when disturbed. These stampedes can result in mortality.
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With warming conditions come more vessels making the journey into remote ecosystems that were once inaccessible. With more vessels in Arctic waters, the threat of an oil spill impacting wildlife seems all but inevitable and more ships increase noise pollution, ship strikes, pollution from ballast water and entanglement in marine debris.
Species Extinction From Global Warming
While climate change will continue to make life harder for walruses in the Arctic, is working to protect habitat, bolster spill response, mitigate climate change and defend the Marine Mammal Protection Act. We are fighting for the protection of Arctic Ocean and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska habitat.
We launched the Alaska Wildlife and Coasts Portal to draw on the latest technology and be a teaching aid and interactive pathway to foster dialogue and action, and ultimately better preparedness for oil spills in the region. We co-hosted the Pacific Walrus Spill Response Experts Workshop that brought walrus experts together to solicit advice and information from invited experts in marine mammal oil spill response.
Identified as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife determined in October 2017 that the Pacific walrus did not warrant listing.
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The Pacific walrus range is expanding and is found in the Bering Sea, as far south as the Bristol Bay area, and the Chukchi, Beaufort, East Siberian and Laptev Seas.
Walruses are very social animals and congregate in large numbers. They haul out in herds and males and females form separate herds during the non-breeding season. They establish dominance through threat displays involving tusks, bodies and aggression.
Walrus staples include clams, mussels and other benthic (bottom dwelling) organisms that they locate using their whiskers. They are also known to eat carcasses of young seals when food is scarce.
The 11 Most Endangered Animals And How You Can Help Them
We are fighting for the protection of the Arctic Ocean and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska habitat. Stay up to date here!Last week, of Wildlife published a ground-breaking study in the prestigious journal Nature Climate Change in which we found that 99.8% of endangered animals listed on the Endangered Species Act (ESA) are sensitive to climate change. Yet despite widespread evidence of climate change as a threat to biodiversity, government agencies are not adequately addressing this threat to species. Agencies tasked with protecting and restoring endangered species only considered climate change a threat to 64% of endangered animals, and planned management actions addressed climate change for only 18% of animals.
One species within that 18% with planned management action that address climate change is the piping plover. These shorebirds nest on beaches and coasts, where they are threatened by flooding, sea-level rise and incursion from invasive species. The species’ 2009 five-year review is an example of an ESA document that effectively lays out this emerging threat and recommending actions to stabilize beaches and to better understand long-term impacts.
But the majority of planning documents for climate-sensitive species lack that level of attention. For instance, California condors, once at the very edge of extinction but now on a path to recovery, are highly threatened by lead and other contaminants, whose toxicity could increase with warmer temperatures. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) merely recommends studying the effects of climate change on the condor but has not yet planned management action.
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Red-cockaded woodpeckers require old-growth longleaf pine, a rare, highly specific habitat that is sensitive to severe events like hurricanes. FWS has not published any ESA documents for these birds since 2006 and none of the existing documents discuss climate change.
The Everglades snail kite is sensitive to drought in the wetlands where they forage, and in 2017, Hurricane Irma destroyed every single one of the 44 active snail kite nests on Lake Okeechobee. FWS has not considered climate change in ESA documents for this species.
Florida grasshopper sparrows are found in only a handful of populations and are sensitive to the timing and amount of water in their marshy nesting habitats. Yet the sparrow lacks any consideration of climate change in its management documents.
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Key deer, restricted to the Florida Keys that are disappearing with rising seas, only receive management direction of “more study” of the climate threat.
The Hawaiian stilt lives in coastal wetlands and mudflats that are sensitive to sea-level rise, but the 2012 recovery plan describes this issue as “beyond the scope of management.”
Many endemic Hawaiian bird species, like the small Kauai thrush and the Oahu elepaio, which are at risk as warming allows mosquitoes carrying deadly avian malaria to survive at higher elevations, shrinking the safe zones for the birds, have outdated plans that don’t discuss climate change.
Species And Climate Change
Attwater’s prairie-chickens, which live only in a narrow band of remnant prairie along the Texas coast, are now restricted to two small populations. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey killed 24 of the 29 hens that were being tracked at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, as well as 80 percent of the birds in the only other wild population. The bird’s 2010 recovery plan does not mention climate change.
Golden-cheeked warblers inhabit small, fragmented habitats that are patchily distributed and sensitive to fire. The most recent recovery document, a 2014 five-year review, states that “All possible impacts from climate change cannot presently be predicted.”
Our study shows that while climate change is a pressing threat to imperiled species, the agencies that manage species protected by the Endangered Species Act have not given enough attention to this threat. Even worse, we found the agencies are moving in the wrong direction, with recent plans less likely to address climate change than they were a few years ago. The results of this new research highlight the gap between the widespread sensitivity of species to climate change and the insufficient attention from federal agencies charged with conserving endangered species.
Polar Bear: A Powerful Predator On Ice
Federal agencies must recognize the threat of climate change to our most imperiled animals and plan for how to mitigate and adapt to the threat. In addition to setting the nation on a path towards a lower-emissions future, Congress should:
As the U.S. develops new laws and policies to address climate change and allocates conservation funding, it is essential that steps are taken to protect our most imperiled species from the perils of climate change.
If you’d like to dive deeper into the data, please visit our free, interactive web application containing data and results from the study, developed and hosted by the Center for Conservation Innovation at of Wildlife.A polar bear stands on an ice floe near Manitoba, Canada, in 2012. Polar bears depend on sea ice, which is forming later in the fall and disappearing earlier in the spring.
Biodiversity On The Brink: The Consequences Of A Weakened Endangered Species Act
Climate change is doing widespread and consequential harm to animals and plants, which are struggling to adapt to new conditions, according to a major report released Monday.
The report, from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finds that many life-forms are moving north or into deeper waters to survive as their habitats shift.
They're also being forced to change their behaviors. For instance, many birds are nesting, breeding, and migrating earlier as spring arrives sooner than before. (Related: Ten U.S. Species Feeling Global Warming's Heat.)
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Evidence of climate change impacts is strongest and most comprehensive for natural systems, the report said. (See: New Climate Change Report Warns of Dire Consequences.)
Current research suggests that winners in this transformation will be adaptable species that are expanding their ranges, including many weeds and pests, and also cold-sensitive, invasive species like the Burmese python in Florida, said Peter Alpert, a program director in environmental biology at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.
The losers, Alpert said, will likely be the species that are highly specialized in what they eat or where they live, especially those whose habitats disappear completely.
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That might include species such as koalas, which depend mainly on eucalyptus for survival, and the many animal and plant species that live only on isolated mountaintops.
You have to hope that they can change fast enough to keep up with it, he said. Species have experienced swings like this in the past, but [the changes] have probably taken a thousand times longer.
Bob Scholes and Hans-Otto Pörtner, both IPCC authors who contributed to the report's ecosystems chapters, agreed,
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