Method Accounts for Climate Change and Man-made Damage
Climate change’s impacts differ from place to place.
This is especially applicable to endangered populations of wildlife. Thus, scientists need to arrive at a way in which to measure vulnerable animals in extreme weather phenomena.
The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has found a way to do this. According to Eric Isai Ameca y Juarez of the ZSL, the effects of climate change towards increased intensity of natural disasters require a “need to identify animals at risk of being washed away in a flood, or destroyed by wildfire.”
The ZSL posits that the reason behind is that, while climate change and related disasters negatively affect some species, others are benefited by it. An example is the weather phenomenon hurricane which, in 1999 in France favored roe deer as it increased their food in winter. An opposite is the case of Belize where an excess of 40 percent of the black howler monkey population got decimated by hurricane Iris as it ravaged their rainforest habitat.
Says Nathalie Pettorelli, senior author from ZSL: “Extreme natural events represent a growing threat to biodiversity, and this might be particularly true for populations already under pressure due to habitat degradation or over exploitation.
In contrast to France’s roe deer, Belize’z black howler monkey population was already in a state of vulnerability due to the massive degradation of their forest habitat and the hurricane merely multiplied effects of this man-made destruction.
Pettorelli emphasized that the new model will take into account the combined threat of man-made and natural disasters to different species “…in the hope that these will be taken into account when evaluating species extinction risk.”