The Asian Development Bank is warning countries to prepare for influxes of people fleeing natural disasters as climate change exacerbates rising sea levels, soil degradation and seasonal flooding.
Natural disasters drove 42 million people from their homes in the Asia-Pacific in 2010 and 2011, though it was unclear how many of those were caused by climate change, the bank said in a study released Tuesday.
It said that one-third of Southeast Asia's population lives in at-risk areas, including Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (click on map for larger view). Six of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change are in the Asia-Pacific. Bangladesh tops the list followed by India, Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
The study did not make any specific projections for migration induced by climate change, noting that the numbers are difficult to estimate as migration decisions often depend on a wide array of factors, including poverty.
"Given that climate change acts as an aggravating factor for environmental degradation, it is expected to boost the number of people migrating because of environmental changes, both sudden and slow onset. Though the amplitude of these movements remains difficult to forecast, climate change is likely to become a major driver of migration in the 21st century," it said.
It cited theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, as saying that the Asia-Pacific will bear the brunt of significant temperature increases, changing rainfall patterns, greater monsoon variability, sea-level rise, floods, and more intense tropical cyclones. Most scientists expect such changes to accompany a rise in the planet's temperature caused in part by greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels for electricity and transport.
The region is particularly vulnerable because of its high population density and long coastlines. Recent examples of such migration include Papua New Guinea, where residents of Carteret and neighboring atolls moved to the island of Bougainville because of rising sea levels.
In 2010, more than 10 million Pakistanis were displaced by monsoon rains and flooding along the Indus River basin, and last year, a typhoon ravaged the southern Philippines, displacing more than 300,000 people.
Last Friday, we won a huge clean air victory when the Senate rejected an amendment that would have blocked EPA's lifesaving clean air rule for industrial boilers.
This victory will save up to 8,100 lives every year and reduce the threat of toxic mercury pollution, which causes brain damage in kids.
Then, please email your Senators to either thank them for supporting life-saving clean air standards… Or to express your disappointment with their toxic air vote.
This was a crucial clean air victory and proves that when we stand together, we can stand up to the lavishly funded dirty air lobby and win.
Thank you for everything you do to make our work possible.
As you read this, black bears are emerging from their winter dens. New cubs are exploring their forest homes with their mothers for the very first time. Together, they will search for food.
But for many of these magnificent creatures, that search will end in tragedy. Many will find themselves in the middle of a busy roadway, right in the path of oncoming traffic, with nowhere to escape. Others might be trapped from rubble plummeting down mountainsides. Still more will struggle to find clean and safe drinking water for their families.
Iconic wildlife range from Maine to Alabama: the Appalachian forests are home to some of the richest arrays of flora and fauna in America. But every day, animals that call this area home are continually struggling to find the bare necessities they need to survive.
The survival of wildlife and their young are constantly being threatened by:
Mountaintop removal coal mining demolishing prime habitat
Natural gas drilling, or fracking, contaminating mountain streams and wells
Roadway development cutting through essential migration routes
And so much more
This treasured landscape is seeing destruction at every turn. It’s up to you to protect it. NWF is working with key landowners, government officials and other partners to safeguard the iconic wildlife of Appalachia.
So please… become a critical part of our efforts to protect Appalachian wildlife today. If we allow the destruction of this extremely iconic and important region, the quality of life for animals like black bears and bobcats will continue to diminish. You’ll be showing your support for the protection of our nation’s wildlife, and helping to raise awareness to keep both wildlife and our Appalachian forests safe.
Sincerely, John Kostyack Vice President, Wildlife Conservation
P.S. All wild animals need room to find the basics for survival — food, water and mates. Donate today and help NWF create protections for black bears and other at-risk wildlife all along the Appalachian Trail and across America!
Give animals access to the necessities they need to survive!
We need your support to protect wildlife up and down the Appalachian Trail. Donate today to help at-risk wildlife gain safe access to food, water and shelter.
Dozens of conservation groups and nearly 100 scientists voiced opposition on Thursday to an Obama administration proposal they say would make it much harder for imperiled creatures to qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act.
The proposed policy change, formally unveiled in December, stems from an ongoing dispute over the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl, a small, rare bird whose range includes the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and a previous fight over the flat-tailed horned lizard in the California desert.
Critics say protection of imperiled plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act would be sharply curtailed by the administration's plan to reinterpret a key phrase of the 1973 statute, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental law.
The administration has said the policy change would "help clarify" which species are eligible for federal safeguards, acknowledging that its proposal is based on "a more specific and stringent standard."
The act currently defines an endangered species as being "in danger of extinction in all or a significant portion of its range," meaning that a species need not be at risk of disappearing everywhere in order to deserve protection.
The administration's proposal would redefine "significant" range as a portion of habitat so vital that its loss would threaten the survival of the species as a whole. Also under the revised policy, consideration of whether a species is threatened or endangered in a portion of its range would be limited strictly to those areas where it currently exists, rather than to its historic range.
FROM OWLS TO EAGLES
"If this policy had been in place when the Endangered Species Act was passed, the bald eagle would never have been protected in any of the lower 48 states, because there were still a lot of eagles up in Alaska," said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director of the Arizona-based group Center for Biological Diversity.
A letter addressed to Tina Campbell, the policy chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, opposing the move was signed by the heads of 80 environmental groups, including the Endangered Species Coalition, Earthjustice and the Humane Society of the United States. A similar letter was signed by 97 conservation scientists around the country. The letters were sent on the last day of a public comment period for the proposal, which has drawn more than 400 written responses, some from development and industry organizations welcoming the change.
Alaska Miners Association executive director Fred Parady said his organization supports the "confirmation that 'range' means 'current range,' not 'historical range,'" and he encouraged the government to "strive for maximum regulatory flexibility" when implementing the proposed policy.
Gary Frazer, assistant director of the endangered species program for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Congress left it up to the Interior Department agency to spell out the meaning of "a significant portion of range."
That agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Commerce Department share responsibility for administering the law and issued the proposed policy change together. Frazer said the plan seeks to address legal challenges raised in deciding whether to impose broad restrictions on commercial activity for the sake of an entire species when only an isolated population of that species is imperiled. He said the government is expected to use its authority to protect certain imperiled plants and animals sparingly. "It certainly means not willy-nilly, listing tiny little populations all over the map on the basis of that population alone," Frazer said.
Critics of the plan say the same reasoning already has been applied in denying protection to the pygmy owl, which the government originally recommended for listing before reversing course.
The western range of the tiny owl, measuring less than 7 inches in length, extends from central and southern Arizona south through the Sonoran desert into the Mexican states of Sonora and Sinaloa.
According to the group Defenders of Wildlife, the bird is threatened mainly by habitat loss from development, livestock grazing, water withdrawals and other factors. Since 1996, authorities in Arizona have counted 12 to 41 adult pygmy owls a year, and in 2006 surveyors spotted only 28.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service has long been criticized for only protecting species on the very brink of extinction, which makes recovery a difficult, uphill slog," Greenwald said. "This policy would actually codify that approach."
The world's fastest animal, the African cheetah, is losing its ability to reproduce because of climate change, according to Kenyan researchers.
Scientists with the National Museums of Kenya (NMK) and the Kenya Wildlife Service have discovered that the animal, Acinonyx jubatus, has developed abnormal coils in its sperm as a result of warmer temperatures, affecting the big cat's ability to reproduce. The warmer temperatures are also affecting its feeding habits, they say. Risky Agwanda, head of mammology section at NMK, said: "Climate change has contributed to defects of the cheetah sperm. Many have abnormal coils, low sperm counts, as well as extremely low testosterone levels. Change in climate has made the survival of the gazelle difficult to survive and as a result, the cheetah has had to switch to other diets, also affecting its ability to reproduce effectively.".
He added that the animal, that can accelerate from 0-100kph in three seconds, but has a sperm count 10 times lower than the domestic cat.
"Cheetahs love to prey on Thomson's gazelles, they have a very high protein content compared to other herbivores and the population of the gazelle has been on a rapid decline due to poor climate conditions and human activities.
"We have studied a large number of the cheetahs. As a result, it preys on other herbivores such as the zebra which do not have a high nutritional content. We discovered that the gazelle diet can actually help maintain the good health of the cheetah sperm if the animal has not yet been negatively affected by poor climate," explained Agwanda.
There are currently only 1,000 cheetahs in Kenya according to figures from the Kenya Wildlife Service. In the early 1980s, there were more than 5,000 cheetahs in Kenya.
Cheetah hunts gazelle
As gazelle numbers continue to decrease due to drought, conservation efforts of the cheetah could be badly affected. The gazelles are also crossbreeding with other herbivores, reducing their protein content further, Agwanda said. (Right: current cheetah distribution from Wikipaedia - image in public domain)
Scientists have never discovered any reproductive health deficiencies in other big cats, which they say can adapt more to climate change compared to the cheetah.
"The genetic make-up of the animal is more sensitive as compared to the other big cats. The cheetahs have weak genes," said Agwanda.
Mordecai Ogada, a fellow cheetah researcher at the National Museums, says that also another problem threatening the survival of the animal is conflict between humans and wildlife, resulting in damage to to the cheetha's habitat. Ogada added that cheetah numbers have also declined because of poaching for their skin, which fetches a high price on the black market.
President Barack Obama, defending himself against election-year attacks over his energy policies, said on March 2nd that his critics were trying to set up a "false choice" between protecting the environment and boosting the economy.
Republicans, citing Democrat Obama's rejection of TransCanada's Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, have accused Obama of pandering to environmental groups important to his political base at the expense of job-creating energy projects. "There will always be people in this country who say that we've got to choose between clean air, clean water and growing the economy, between doing right by the environment and putting people back to work," Obama told an audience in Washington that included hunters, fishermen, conservationists and small business owners.
"I'm here to tell you that is a false choice," said Obama, who has gone on the offensive against Republican complaints that his policies are to blame for lofty gas prices, as they target what they think is a soft spot on his record in a bid to derail his re-election hopes in November.
Obama, who grew up in Hawaii and spent several years of his childhood in Indonesia, also recalled traveling the U.S. mainland when he was 11 with his mother and grandmother, reminiscing about touring Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. West and seeing deer and bison for the first time.
"With smart, sustainable policies we can grow our economy today and protect our environment for ourselves and our children," the president said.
Backpacking scientists from UC Berkeley have gathered compelling evidence that the warming High Sierra climate is pushing still another animal species to seek cooler habitats amid the higher regions of Yosemite National Park.
Global warming has forced alpine chipmunks (left) in Yosemite to higher ground, prompting a startling decline in the species' genetic diversity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
This study, which appeared Feb. 19, in the advance online publication of the journal Nature Climate Change, is one of the first to show a hit to the genetic diversity of a species because of a recent climate-induced change in the animals' geographic range. What's more, the genetic erosion occurred in the relatively short span of 90 years, highlighting the rapid threat changing climate can pose to a species.
With low genetic diversity a species can be more vulnerable to the effects of inbreeding, disease and other problems that threaten species survival, the researchers said. "Climate change is implicated as the cause of geographic shifts observed among birds, small mammals and plants, but this new work shows that, particularly for mountain species like the alpine chipmunk, such shifts can result in increasingly fragmented and genetically impoverished populations," said study lead author Emily Rubidge, who conducted the research while a Ph.D. student atUC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. "Under continued warming, the alpine chipmunk could be on the trajectory towards becoming threatened or even extinct."
These findings build upon previous research that found major shifts in the range of small mammals in Yosemite National Park since the early 1900s. In 2003, biologists at UC Berkeley began an ambitious resurvey of Yosemite's birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, retracing the steps originally taken between 1914 and 1920 by Joseph Grinnell, founder and former director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
Co-author James Patton discusses Alpine chipmunk study
The Grinnell Resurvey Project, led by Moritz and museum colleagues, found that many small mammals in Yosemite moved or retracted their ranges to higher, cooler elevations over the past century, a period when the average temperature in the park increased by 3 degrees Celsius, or about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
In light of Grinnell's findings, it is no surprise that the alpine chipmunk (Tamias alpinus) would be more sensitive to the temperature change, since it is a high-elevation species endemic to California's Sierra Nevada, the researchers said. In the early 1900s, Grinnell and colleagues sighted alpine chipmunks at elevations of 7,800 feet. Now, the alpine chipmunk appears to be sticking to even higher elevations, retracting its range by about 1,640 feet upslope. The new study, tracking changes in the home range of a single chipmunk species during the past 90 years, follows many other recent reports by field biologists that salamanders, field mice and ground squirrels, among others, also have been driven by rising temperatures to seek new homes at higher elevations in the park. (At right: distribution of alpine chipmunk)
The new evidence for the effects of global warming comes from a study of the alpine chipmunk (Tamias alpinus) that Emily M. Rubidge, 36, a former UC Berkeley graduate student, carried out during four recent summers. Rubidge camped, hiked and surveyed the chipmunks among the talus slopes of Yosemite's higher mountains, where the animals live and rear their young.
Back in 1914, a famed Berkeley field biologist named Joseph Grinnell led a team of naturalists surveying the lives and habitats of virtually every animal living in Yosemite at that time. His tissue samples, plus 2,000 pages of notes, provided the details that Rubidge and her colleagues used to discover how much higher the chipmunk species has moved its home range.
Grinnell's time temperature records in the park also show that Yosemite has warmed by 5 degrees, she found. Of the 28 species that Grinnell recorded, 16 have moved 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) up the sloped mountain terrain in search for someplace more suitable to live. Three are nearing extinction, like the alpine chipmunk, a mammal unique to California.
Grinnell reported in 1914 that the lowest elevation in the park where he and his team could find the alpine chipmunks living was at about 7,800 feet. Today, Rubidge and her colleagues report that they have found none of the same chipmunk species living anywhere lower than 9,629 feet - a change in elevation of well more than 1,800 feet.
Back in the laboratory at UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology - where Grinnell was the founding director long ago - Rubidge and her colleagues also discovered that the move toward higher elevations has significantly narrowed the genetic diversity of the animals since Grinnell's time. That development, a kind of "genetic erosion," has led many other species on a long downward slope toward eventual extinction.
To analyze those genes, Rubidge obtained cell samples from tiny ear clippings she took from 146 chipmunks that she trapped and released as she moved her campsites up toward 10,000 feet.
Her report on the changes in chipmunk habitat and in the animal's genes was published Sunday in a new refereed journal called Nature Climate Change. The study is part of a long-range UC Berkeley project documenting many changes in the animal life of Yosemite today compared with the Grinnell survey's reports of nearly a century ago.
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The Asian Development Bank is warning countries to prepare for influxes of people fleeing natural disasters as climate change exacerbates rising sea levels, soil degradation and seasonal flooding.
as saying that the Asia-Pacific will bear the brunt of significant temperature increases, changing rainfall patterns, greater monsoon variability, sea-level rise, floods, and more intense tropical cyclones. Most scientists expect such changes to accompany a rise in the planet's temperature caused in part by greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels for electricity and transport.
Thanks for all you do,
Sincerely,
