Animals Effected By Climate Change More Than Humans

There are still people out there that deny that the weather is getting warmer and warmer.  Most of the West Coast is experiencing problems with droughts from California to Washington.  These droughts are abnormally dry to exceptional drought, which is the worst.  A good portion of the California is in a stage of exceptional drought.  The East Coast isn’t without areas of abnormally dry and moderate drought too.  The country has experienced droughts before but none this bad.  The constant heating of the world has led to harmful conditions for many animals, in fact most animals are more affected by climate change than we are.

With the hotter climate the natural habitat for many animals is changing much faster than it ever has.  Many species have experienced an extreme change in the weather before but it has always been a much slower process.  The food sources for many animals in the wilderness are also at risk as plants are being affected by the change in the weather too.The salmon is experiencing major effects of climate change recently.  In Washington State and elsewhere the water levels are lower than they usually are and the temperature of the air is warmer.  This results in warmer water temperatures that the salmon simply isn’t used to.  Salmon rely on the cold water of their streams to go up river to mate and then swim make down river.  The problem is that the temperatures are above their normal and the fish are being cooked in the rivers, their normal habitat at this time of the year.  Hundreds of thousands of salmon have already died this year due to being cooked in the rivers.

The polar bear is the poster child for global warming because they are large and cute and almost everyone knows about them.  Normally polar bears use the ice caps to hunt and fish but every year the ice caps are starting off smaller and melting earlier.  With this their natural habitat and hunting territory is gone.  It has been theorized by many people that the polar bear will be able to adapt to live more like the traditional bear but there has yet to be any evidence of that. Reindeer’s are another type of species having trouble surviving the warmer temperatures.  This includes the caribou as they are classified as the same species with one being domesticated and the other being wild.  Reindeer have adapted to their climate by growing more fur and not having sweat glands.  The problem with this is that there is no way for them to vent their heat during the summer, making it extremely hard to survive the summer.

There have already been a small number of species that have become extinct recently.  Take a look at the golden toad from Central America, it and the Monteverde harlequin frog have recently become extinct and it is thought to be that they were killed off due to the climate.  These could just be the first of many species if they can’t learn to adapt to a different climate. Many animals in the wild kingdom are being threatened by climate change.  These animals vary from fish, to reptiles, to mammals.  In most cases the most we can do is hope that the animals learn to adapt to a new climate as we fight to slow down and stop climate change.  There is the chance that there will be animals that our kids will never see that we used to think were common place.