Kayleen Robinson
With climate change occurring many resources necessary for wildlife to survive is becoming harder for them to obtain. With weather conditions being so harsh it is making the lives of wildlife much harder to find the resources they need and causing many animals to start becoming endangered. This is important because with so many animals losing their habitats or not being able to find food there’s going to many endangered animals. On the World Wildlife website, they already have 29 species listed as endangered and there’s many species on the list as critically endangered and vulnerable. Some examples of animals that are already being impacted are sea turtles because they are having a hard time trying to find sites nests because of temperature changes and all of the storms. Polar bears are also a big one and were on the list of threatened species to go extinct in 2008 from the lack of habitat that they need to be able to find food and survive in the wild. Polar bears live off of seals but since theirs is a loss of sea ice its causing them to be in trouble since this is making it harder for them to find their food. Climate change is making some war blooded animals shape shift, researchers have been noticing that these species legs, ears, and beaks have gotten larger this is because animals must adapt to the climate changes. But just because these animals are shape shifting to be able to adjust to the climate conditions does not mean that they are not struggling and living completely fine, it just means that they are evolving in order to try and survive. These animals need help from going extinct and it’s hard for people to help these animals, there are places like rescue centers for wildlife where people do try to take care of species that are going extinct, but people think that’s harmful to them because they are wildlife and should be in the wild not held in captivity. But they aren’t realizing that if some of those animals were not in captivity they would have less of a chance of surviving. In an article I read they talked about how they are trying to help these endangered species by advocating for them and protecting and restoring habitats for these animals, but climate change is definitely making it much harder for them. In the article they wrote, “Climate change is making the protection of endangered species increasingly challenging. Climate change not only affects our plants and animals directly—through changes in temperature and precipitation for instance—but can worsen the impact on endangered species of traditional threats, such as invasive species, wildfires, and diseases.” It’s important for others to see how people are trying to help even if it is difficult, so that way more and more people will want to help as well and see the importance of helping these species from becoming endangered.
These animals don’t have many options on what they can do by themselves, the only things they can do to survive is move or adapt. Most animals move to high elevations to get away from really warm temperatures but with changing so fast it harder for them to move away and if they move, they run into other problems such as finding food and competing with other species to find food. But people can help these species by creating strategies that would work towards decreasing the number of endangered species by protecting habitats that are needed for these animals to survive and preserving the eco system.
Work Cited
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/09/1035503769/climate-change-animals-shape-shift-australia
https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation/Endangered-Species
Data Journalism 395 