I’m picking up more and more reports on global climate change and its impacts on wildlife. Everyone has heard that polar bears are in trouble with the retreat of the sea ice, but caribou, reindeer and musk oxen are also in trouble as the frozen tundra retreats too.
Cold water fish and seabirds are also under threat as the oceans warm up, and the North Atlantic right whale is in trouble as its primary food source, plankton, disappears.
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That is a problem for the whales of the southern oceans too, and staying in the south, penguins have their problems too because of their food source.
The world’s great coral reefs are being negatively impacted by rising water temperatures and so too are sea turtles. Mountain tops are becoming a shrinking habitat as snow lines climb higher, impacting on such species as Alpine butterflies and the wildlife communities that depend on that ecological niche.
Photo: Wikipedia
* Staying with butterflies, Scottish lepidopterists are grateful for a windfall caused by global climate change – more and more species of butterflies are heading north.
A white-letter hairstreak (yes, really) has been spotted in Scotland for the first time since 1884, while the comma and the Essex skipper have both been seen north of the border.
Photo: Wikipedia
And if you are still in doubt about global climate change, for the first time ever a ship has successfully completed the north east sea passage from Europe to the Far East without the assistance of an ice-breaker.
A Russian tanker took just 19 days to steam from Norway to South Korea, that would be much faster than the other route through the Suez Canal. The famous North West Passage across Canada between the Atlantic and the Pacific was successfully navigated in 2013. Both sea routes have opened up because of the retreat of the northern ice pack caused by global warming.
On a positive note, for the first time in years Britain’s population of Arctic terns is booming, thanks to concentrated conservation efforts.
Photo: Wikipedia
The main breeding colony is on the Northumberland coast, but last year just two of the chicks born actually left the nest, the rest fell victim to high tides (think global warming again), marine pollution and predators.
That’s when Britain’s National Trust stepped in, adding an extra 80 hectares to the site and closely guarding it, and this year about 500 chicks left their nests.**
And finally, most of us have a bucket list, a line-up of things we’d like to do in our lives, and so does a 99-year-old woman in the Netherlands. Annie, the only name given, has just realised one of her life-long goals.
Photo: Wikipedia
She just spent a night in the cells at the Nijmegen-Zuid Police Station and could tick that off her list of ‘wanna-do’s’. The police said that they had, at her request of course, even handcuffed her and then let her out in the morning.** How very odd, it’s certainly not on my bucket list.
Sources: Care2Causes and The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
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