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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><i class="">Opinion: Bison Conservation in a Hotter,
Drier Yellowstone <o:p class=""></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">By Lance Olsen<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Last updated October 12, 2012</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b class="">Excerpt: The opening 3 sections</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><i class="">Summary<o:p class=""></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">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 <i class="">beyond</i> its restricted range, much of the
success or failure in conservation of this genetically unique herd will depend
on its ability to shift about<i class=""> within</i>
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.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><i class="">Introduction<o:p class=""></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">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).</p><p class="MsoNormal">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).</p><p class="MsoNormal">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).</p><p class="MsoNormal">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b class=""><i class="">Temperature is habitat<o:p class=""></o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">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.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> 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.</p><p class="MsoBodyText">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.<o:p class=""></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b class="">End of excerpt :</b> I can send the complete analysis as a doc to anyone interested</p>
<!--EndFragment--><div class="">
<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span style="font-size: 11px;" class="">—————————————————————————————————————————————————<br class="">“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.”<br class=""><br class="">“We’re trying to put out there what’s necessary, not what people think is politically possible.”<br class=""><br class="">Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy<br class="">July 22 2019<br class=""><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/" class="">https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/</a><br class=""></span><div class=""><span style="font-size: 11px;" class="">************************************************<br class=""><br class="">A recent Ambio article by some heavyweights in climate sets out the situation well enough. <br class=""><br class="">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 …” <br class=""><br class="">They end it saying,“we risk driving the Earth System onto a trajectory toward more hostile states from which we cannot easily return.”<br class=""><br class="">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. <br class=""><br class="">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.”<br class=""><br class=""><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/" class="">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/14/heat-and-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/</a><br class=""></span></div><span style="font-size: 11px;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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