Category: Animals_Extinction_CN Maine_CN MIGRATION_CN

Maine is home to the largest moose population in the lower 48 states. But in one of the moosiest corners of the state, nearly 90% of the calves tracked by biologists last winter didn’t survive their first year.

Millions of Americans are living in communities with precarious climate conditions, in houses that feel overpriced. There is a solution for many of these people, though: Move to one of the so-called climate havens.

Climate change is no longer just a problem for future generations – it is here now, with storms, wildfires, droughts and extreme temperatures becoming more prevalent in our cities, towns and villages. As these impacts intensify, more Americans are being forced out of their homes or are voluntarily relocating in advance of catastrophes.

Americans have historically been some of the most mobile people in the world, continually seeking better housing and job opportunities. However, in recent years, mobility — particularly among young Americans — has slowed, due largely to dramatic increases in housing prices and housing-related debt among American families since the Great Recession of 2008.The COVID-19 pandemic has also impacted household decision making and thus broader demographic trends, with an estimated 10–13 percent of the population relocating annually in the last five years.

As wildfires worsen and sea levels rise, a small but growing number of Americans are choosing to move to places such as New England or the Appalachian Mountains that are seen as safe havens from climate change. Researchers say this phenomenon will intensify in the coming decades.

There are calls to better define what constitutes “climate migration” amid concern that policies are not keeping up with the growing issue and countries are failing to properly help those fleeing disasters.

The decline of seed-dispersing animals is damaging plants’ ability to adapt to climate breakdown, a study has found. Almost half of all plant species depend on animals to spread their seeds, but scientists fear these plants may be at risk of extinction when animals are driven to migrate to cooler areas, as plants cannot easily follow.

When undocumented migrants cross the U.S.–Mexico border into southern Arizona, they face a perilous journey through the Sonoran Desert, some of the most inhospitable terrain in North America. Summer temperatures in the region routinely top 100 degrees Fahrenheit and water sources are few and far between. Hundreds of migrants die every year in the area, often succumbing to the effects of heat and dehydration.

Bellaliz Gonzalez had never heard of Midland, Michigan, before a white van dropped her off there in late May, 2020. The journey from her home in Miami, with twelve colleagues, had taken around twenty-two hours. She arrived to a region devastated by a recent flood: cracked roads, collapsed bridges. Gonzalez, a fifty-four-year-old asylum seeker from Venezuela, with neatly coiffed auburn hair, prided herself on remaining calm in dangerous situations.

When Hurricane Ida hit New York City on September 16, it dumped more than three inches of rain an hour. Sewers overflowed, streets turned into rivers, and thousands of homes and basements across the city’s five boroughs flooded. Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas saw the devastation firsthand when she toured her constituent neighborhoods of Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside in Queens. Family after family, mostly low-income immigrants