[MCN] Past, present, and likely future of Yellowstone bison

[Lance Olsen]

Opinion: Bison Conservation in a Hotter, Drier Yellowstone

By Lance Olsen

Last updated October 12, 2012

Excerpt: The opening 3 sections

Summary

As global temperatures continue their climb, Yellowstone bison face assorted, escalating risks even within their currently restricted range. Many of these changes are already underway, will become increasingly conspicuous in the years and decades just ahead, and underscore an earlier finding that western U.S. national parks are too small to support their wild mammals. To the extent that land use conflicts prevent the bison’s movements, plausibly including poleward movements forced by need to track climate beyond its restricted range, much of the success or failure in conservation of this genetically unique herd will depend on its ability to shift about within its tightly restricted range, and plausibly not too far in the future. If changes in the ferocity and frequency of fire serve as a guide, the seriousness of emerging new risks for the bison will be obvious by mid-century. The following paragraphs are not intended as an exhaustive review of the relevant literature. They do call attention to key variables that will affect Yellowstone bison and their conservation as temperatures climb.

Introduction

Rising temperatures have become an irreversible, irretrievable part of wildlife conservation for as far as the eye can see. Even if humanity entirely quits its consumption of fossil fuels and forests, the warming already caused by consumption to date will continue to rise and then remain higher for as long as 1,000 years  (Solomon et al, 2009) and possibly for longer than 10,000 years (Eby et al, 2009).

Wildlife conservationists won’t need to wait that long to get an inkling of what a warmer world means for living species and systems. Based on evidence already available, one research team concluded that, “Although we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already clearly visible.” (Walther et al, 2002).

A subsequent, more exhaustive study of more than 800 scientific papers found that  "A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 C)." (Parmesan, 2006).

Future warming will not be so mild, and an increase to 1.5 C or 2 C is generally cited as a danger point for potentially widespread extinctions. Best available projections strongly indicate that warming will exceed 2C (e.g., Schellenhuber 2008). More recently, the International Energy Agency's 2011 World Outlook said that new policies to slash emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and forests may stop warming at 3.5 C, but with current policy the planet is on a path to 6 C or higher.

Temperature is habitat

Every species survives only within certain limits of temperature – thermal limits – and geographic regions of the planet vary in the range of temperatures that characterize them. Today, we speak of these regions as climate envelopes, isotherms, or as suitable habitat, and many species’ suitable habitat is already shifting to the formerly too-cool higher elevations and latitudes.

 This shift is analogous to a home being moved away, and its residents forced to follow, or to try. For example, the mountain pine beetle has been able to make itself at home at the higher elevations and latitudes where previously cold temperatures had fatal effect, so that the beetle can now kill whitebark pine at the high elevations of Yellowstone, and other pine species of the higher latitude forests of British Columbia.

But anticipated new extremes of heat can kill some species while supporting others. And new extremes of heat are on the way, causing Meehl and Tebaldi (2004) to warn that areas including the northwest United States could see “…increases of heat wave intensity that could have more serious impacts because these areas are not currently as well adapted to heat waves.” The expected new intensity and duration of heat waves has to be watched for its impact on, among other things, the female’s bison’s capacity for lactation and energy for calf-rearing.

End of excerpt : I can send the complete analysis as a doc to anyone interested

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“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades,” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national [ Extinction Rebellion ] team. “There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.”

“We’re trying to put out there what’s necessary, not what people think is politically possible.”

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/ <https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/>
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A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate sets out the situation well enough. 

A team including the likes of Will Steffen, Paul Crutzen, Veerabhadren Ramathan, Johan Rockstrom, Marten Scheffer and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber begin the abstract of their article by saying “Over the past century, the total material wealth of humanity has been enhanced …”  

They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”

Their analysis is echoed across the scientists side of the situation. But it doesn’t take a scientist to get the drift of what’s going on. 

Liam Denning is former investment banker, former editor of one of the Wall Street Journal’s most closely read columns —Heard on the Street — and a former columnist for Financial Times. Writing about the Green New Deal for Bloomberg, Denning has come to the conclusion that, “We have built our standard of living on forms of energy that we now know pose a threat to our very existence,” and that, “this is a conversation that is long overdue — and necessarily begins with a shout, not a whisper.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/ <https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/>



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