Climate change as a threat to endangered species

Trae Pina
Climate change as a threat to endangered species



This article is about how the climate change affects the recovery plans of many endangered species. About fifty-five to sixty percent of the recovery plans issued by the U.S. government state that climate change is one of the major threats to the endangered species. Between 2001 and 2004 only sixteen of the eighty-seven, about eighteen percent, of the recovery plans made mentioned climate change as a major extinction threat. This sharply rose though between 2005 and 2008 when seventy-three of the one-hundred-twenty-three, about fifty-nine percent, of the plans issued climate change as a major extinction threat. The government has not yet produced a plan to combat climate change in order to help these endangered species recovery. Some of the climate changes that are further endangering these species could be the melting of the polar ice caps, warming or cooling of some regions, and the global water temperature rising.

I believe this article has to do with ecology. Climate change is affecting many environments and biospheres. If a species were to go extinct due to climate change it would affect that regions food web and food chain, drastically affecting other species in either good or bad ways. Say the African lion went extinct due a sudden change in the earth’s climate. Anything this animal might have hunted such as zebra or buffalo would over graze the land and eventually die out. Now say if the zebra and buffalo suddenly went extinct, then the lion would have little to nothing to feed on, and only those that could adapt to there environment could survive. This could include not having to eat for longer periods or learning how to hunt other animals. One other example is the melting of the polar ice caps. For the polar bears who need to eat and can only swim for a limited time before drowning, the melting and breaking up of the ice is happening sooner and faster. This is causing more and more of them to die.

The reason that we should care about the climate change affecting these endangered species is that we are the ones that initially caused them to become endangered. Now we are the ones that are causing the climate changes with things such as global warming, over hunting, and pollution of the earth’s waters, land and air. I believe the article was put up to show how climate change affects not only affects our safety and lives but also the already endangered species around the globe, and those who are close to becoming extinct or endangered. I think it was also put up to show how the climate is rapidly changing, and how it’s affecting more and more species around the globe.