Amazing Pets Academy

Posts Tagged ‘climate change and animals’

A while back we wrote an interesting article highlighting the effects of climate change on amphibians. I highly recommend that you take a moment to read that article, which you can find the article if you click my username and browse my submitted articles, as it does a great job at investigating the effects on a species that is very in tune and dependant on its environment. But what about the effect of climate change on everything else?

We’ve heard the stories and press releases for years – holes in the ozone layer, the polar ice caps melting and migration patterns disrupted. The out-of-season weather patterns are also disrupting wildlife. These factors are all compound and have been growing in magnitude for some time. Often, these issues are interlinked, and the wildlife of the world is being affected more and more obviously.

The melting polar ice caps are of particular concern as they broadly affect a number of species that are dependent on the ice plateaus as home and hunting ground. The Arctic circle’s ice loss has reached the point where the Northwester Passage has been carved open, with commercial vessels able to navigate the gap; in the past, only specially designed ice-breakers were able to traverse the passage before it froze over again.

This will lead polar bears, and other Arctic animals, to migrate. There is already going to be strain on the areas where they will migrate to, which will impact on all local wildlife. Of course, should the polar bears not manage to migrate then we can expect them to become extinct, as they rely on the pack ice and ice floes to hunt.

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