[MCN] Heat and wildlife : Nat'l Geographic July 22 and Washington Post July 24

[Lance Olsen]

National Geographic Published July 22, 2021
Extreme heat triggers mass die-offs and stress for wildlife in the West
BY NATASHA DALY

EXCERPTS : To understand how wildlife is affected by extreme heat, says Mažeika Sullivan <https://senr.osu.edu/our-people/mazeika-sullivan>, a professor at Ohio State University's School of Environment and Natural Resources, it’s important to keep in mind that heat waves are just one of the challenges wildlife face.
 
“It’s about multiple stressors,” he says. Extreme heat events are compounded by drought, rising temperatures, bigger and more intense wildfires, and increasingly fragmented habitats.
 
Animals “only have so many coping mechanisms,” he says. “And asking them to cope with so many environmental stressors that are happening over long time scales and then heat waves for multiple days—it’s impossible to talk about one without talking about it in context.”

Salmon, for example, are migratory fish, moving from the ocean up rivers to spawn. They’re already stressed by the network of dams they need to get over or around, Sullivan says. 

But during a heat wave, they’re hit with “a double whammy,” says Jonathon Stillman <http://ib.berkeley.edu/labs/stillman/>, adjunct biology professor at University of California, Berkeley, who researches how environmental changes affect marine life. Salmon face both increased water temperature and decreased oxygen, he says, because warmer water contains less of it. “It’s like if you had to run a marathon while wearing a plastic bag over your head, while it’s 10 degrees warmer outside,” Stillman says. “You’d die too.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/extreme-heat-triggers-mass-die-offs-and-stress-for-wildlife-in-the-west

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The Washington Post  July 24, 2021

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/24/experts-express-concerns-animal-safety-heat-waves-continue-rip-through-pacific-northwest/ <https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/24/experts-express-concerns-animal-safety-heat-waves-continue-rip-through-pacific-northwest/>

Experts express concerns for animal safety as heat waves continue to rip through the Pacific Northwest

Untold numbers of animals are at risk, with extreme heat and climate change damaging natural habitats across the region

By David Suggs

Excerpts : Rising temperatures have coincided with drier conditions in parts of the Pacific Northwest, shaping the ways habitats interact with organisms. The full scope of the ramifications is still being studied, but it is expected to be extensive.

How does extreme heat affect animals?
Extreme heat, coupled with drier conditions, can significantly alter animals’ habitats. 

Climate change “is going to affect how different plants live and or survive from seedlings on up into their adulthood,” Kehne said. “That’s going to change some of the species that occur across the landscape.”

How are animals responding to extreme heat?
Animals have different tools to protect themselves from the effects of extreme heat. Some stay in the shade, while others lurk in creeks or lakes, according to Patrick Taylor, chief of interpretation and education at Death Valley National Park.

However, there is only so much an animal can do.

“One of the places where this has really been studied has been in Australia, where there have been mass mortality events during heat waves,” Seavy said. “Birds have packed into very small areas of shade, and you find hundreds if not thousands of birds that have expired from the heat.”

How are experts responding?
As the effects of climate change become more and more evident, some experts are reevaluating their prior projections. One of Harley’s graduate students brought propane camp heaters down to the shore in the hopes of simulating a heat wave earlier in the month.

The actual heat wave that hit British Columbia was far hotter than the experiment.

“We’ve had to recalibrate our expectations and now we’re focused on what might happen in the very near future,” Harley said.

“This is going to be a continual rise,” he said. “That’s really hard to get your head around and harder and harder for people to understand that it’s actually happening and try to take action to correct that.”

Still, experts remain hopeful that the worst impacts can be averted. Climate change is becoming more evident to both researchers and the general public. As the problems become clearer, perhaps so will the solutions, Harley said.

“I think it is important not to lose hope,” Harley said. “It’s really bad. But if we can understand it, that helps us plan. And hopefully, we can all make small steps to make these things less likely in the future.”


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“Full of recent references and statistics, Harvesting the Biosphere adds to the growing chorus of warnings about the current trajectory of human activity on a finite planet, of which climate change is only one dimension. 

“One can quibble with some assumptions or tweak Smil’s calculations, but the bottom line will not change, only the time it may take humanity to reach a crisis point.”

Stephen Running. “Approaching the Limits” Science 15 March 2013.

Book review. Harvesting the Biosphere: What we have taken from Nature. by Vaclav Smil .  MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012. 315 pp. $29, £19.95. ISBN 9780262018562.

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“Man …  is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)


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