Most mammals won’t flee climate change fast enough
By Emily Sohn, Discovery Channel
14 May 2012 As the climate changes over the next century, the ranges of nearly 90 percent of mammal species will shrink — in many cases because animals won’t be able to get to areas where the climate is going to become suitable for them, says new research. Across the Western Hemisphere, the study also found, nearly 10 percent of mammals will be unable to move fast enough to keep up with changes in climate. In some areas, such as the Amazon, that number will be as high as 40 percent. And while some animals will do just fine or even better than before, certain animals in certain places face catastrophic losses of survivable habitat. Most at risk are primates, which will likely lose 75 percent of their range because of both inhospitable climate and the inability to get to livable places. “We could be underestimating the vulnerability of some species to climate change,” said Carrie Schloss, an ecologist at the University of Washington. “There have been a lot of projections done on species’ ranges and where they are projected to be in the future based on where the climate will be suitable,” she added. “But most don’t tell you whether species can get from where they are today to where the climate will be suitable.” […] Animals in tropical regions face the biggest risks, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, possibly because species there are extra-sensitive to even small changes in climate. Across the moist subtropical regions of the western hemisphere, for example, nearly 15 percent of mammals will likely be left behind by climate change. That number jumps to nearly 40 percent in some areas of the Amazon. In those places, species that can only migrate about one kilometer (0.6 miles) each year would need to move eight times faster to keep up with climate-induced shifts in their ideal rangelands. […]
