Global warming, scientists say, is responsible not only for shrinking ice caps but also for a surge in extreme weather that is causing heat waves, wildfires, and droughts, not to mention sea level rise.
Researchers agree that even small changes in temperature are enough to threaten hundreds of already struggling animals. Up to half of the animal and plant species in the world’s most naturally rich areas, such as the Amazon and Galapagos, could face extinction by the turn of the century due to climate change, according to a study published in the journal Climate Change. From polar bears in the Artic to marine turtles off the coast of Africa, our planet’s diversity of life is at risk from the changing climate, even as that is not the only risk.
The key impact of global warming on wildlife is habitat disruption, in which ecosystems—places where animals have spent millions of years adapting—rapidly transform in response to climate change, reducing their ability to adjust. Habitat disruptions (mainly deforestation) are often due to changes in temperature and water availability, which affect the native vegetation and the animals that feed on it. Loss of wetlands, sea level rise, invasive species and disease are all also implicated.
By Christina Larson and Matthew Brown 01/17/23
In a desperate effort to save a seabird species in Hawaii from rising ocean waters, scientists are moving chicks to a new island hundreds of miles away. Moving species to save them — once considered…
By Susmita Baral 01/11/23
The impact of the man-made climate crisis on Antarctica is scientifically undeniable: stable ice shelves are retreating, air temperature increased by 3 degrees Celsius, krill numbers are declining, melting ice is contributing to sea level…
By National Audubon Society 12/23/22
The Fiscal Year 2023 appropriations bill includes important wins for climate and conservation, though fails to include important legislation that would greatly benefit wildlife.
By Dino Grandoni 12/19/22
Delegates at the COP15 biodiversity summit in Canada made a major conservation commitment to try to halt the loss of hundreds of thousands of plants and animals. But it remains to be seen if nations…
By Catrin Einhorn and Lauren Leatherby 12/09/22
WILDLIFE IS DISAPPEARING around the world, in the oceans and on land. The main cause on land is perhaps the most straightforward: Humans are taking over too much of the planet, erasing what was there…
By Dino Grandoni 12/09/22
Diplomats are meeting in Montreal at a biodiversity conference this month to see whether they can rescue species from extinction....
By Gena Steffens 12/08/22
I wasn’t expecting to invite a stranger into my great-grandmother’s house that afternoon. I’d hoped to interview National Geographic Explorer Buddy Powell on the water in Crystal River, a small town in Florida north of…
By Nell Lewis 11/29/22
The petrol-blue wings of a swallowtail butterfly, soft fur of a giant Patagonian bumblebee, and oil-painted smudges of a ladybug are some of the details captured by British photographer Levon Biss in a new book…
11/15/22
Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea are on pace to surpass critical thresholds for coral health by mid-century, but rapid action to significantly reduce emissions could slow warming, giving corals…
By Natalie Angier 11/07/22
In the Cambrian Period, 500 million years ago, the armored set ruled the seas. Soft-bodied animals secreted a mineral paste that hardened into protective shells of immense strength and deco beauty, some shaped like rams’…
By Tatiana Schlossberg 10/27/22
Just yards from the Fish 1, a 22-foot research vessel, a humpback whale about twice the size of the boat hurled itself out of the water, sending shimmering droplets in a broken necklace of splash.
By Dino Grandoni 10/25/22
It is the only animal that dares to breed during the Antarctic winter. It endures gale-force winds and freezing temperatures to lay and protect a single egg. Now climate change threatens Antarctica’s emperor penguin with…
10/13/22
The Living Planet Report 2022 is a comprehensive study of trends in global biodiversity and the health of the planet. This flagship WWF publication reveals an average decline of 69% in species populations since 1970.…
09/01/21
The Sumatran rhino, the smallest, shaggiest, and most endangered of the world’s five rhinoceros species, is found only on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
08/31/21
Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) has been developed over centuries or millennia by indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) and is continuously evolving. It provides a unique and rich source of information on biodiversity. There…
By Dino Grandoni 10/17/22
The decline of ice in Glacier National Park is revealing once buried salt licks. Now mountain goats and bighorn sheep are fighting over them.
By Bill McKibben 10/14/22
A vast new study finds there are 70 percent fewer wild animals sharing the earth with us than there were in 1970. A vast new study finds there are 70 percent fewer wild animals sharing…
By Joe Hernandez 10/14/22
Global animal populations are declining, and we've got limited time to try to fix it. That's the upshot of a new report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, which analyzed…
By Patrick Greenfield 10/13/22
Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and…
By Eric Mack 10/13/22
On average, most wildlife species number less than a third what they did in 1970, during a period when we added over four billion humans to the planet. That’s the latest startling statistic from the…
By Hannah Ritchie 10/13/22
The Living Planet Index is the biodiversity metric that always claims the headlines. Unfortunately many of these headlines are wrong. The index is very easy to misinterpret. The Living Planet Index reports an average decline…
By Julia Jacobo 10/13/22
Drastic declines in animal species over the past several decades paints a grim picture for the future of healthy ecosystems, which in turn impact human health, according to a new report. Populations of monitored vertebrate…
By Catrin Einhorn 10/12/22
It’s clear that wildlife is suffering mightily on our planet, but scientists don’t know exactly how much. A comprehensive figure is exceedingly hard to determine. Counting wild animals — on land and at sea, from…
By Phoebe Weston 09/28/22
The State of the World’s Birds report, which is released every four years by BirdLife International, shows that the expansion and intensification of agriculture is putting pressure on 73% of species. Logging, invasive species, exploitation…
By Ella Hambly 08/02/22
The authors say that the consequences of more extreme warming - still on the cards if no action is taken - are "dangerously underexplored". They argue that the world needs to start preparing for the…
By Jennifer Hassan 07/28/22
Illegal ivory poaching once posed a significant threat to Kenya’s elephants. But now the giants of the animal kingdom are facing an even bigger risk: climate change. As Kenya battles its worst drought in four…
By Christina Larson 07/28/22
Sliding off the side of her small boat, seabird biologist Bonnie Slaton wades through waist-high water as brown pelicans soar overhead until she reaches the shores of Raccoon Island. During seabird breeding season, this place…
By Natasha Daly 07/21/22
A beloved visitor to summer gardens is officially an endangered species. The migratory monarch butterfly—the iconic subspecies common to North America—was declared endangered today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the…
By Dino Grandoni 07/21/22
The migratory monarch butterfly, a North American icon with a continent-spanning annual journey, now faces the threat of extinction, according to a top wildlife monitoring group.
By Gianna Melillo 07/19/22
Amid increasingly dire headlines foretelling a grim outlook for the Earth’s biodiversity and environment, results of a new survey conducted among more than 3,300 scientists show the extent of extinction might be even worse than…
By David J. Craig 06/21/22
The Alaskan tundra, a vast, windswept, and treeless region at the edge of the Arctic Circle, is a place of stunning natural beauty. In winter, the area is blanketed by darkness, and polar bears, wolves,…
By Kevin Miller and Others 05/18/22
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…
By Sarah Kaplan 04/28/22
Warming waters are cooking creatures in their own habitats. Many species are slowly suffocating as oxygen leaches out of the seas. Even populations that have managed to withstand the ravages of overfishing, pollution and habitat…
By Catrin Einhorn 04/28/22
At first, the scientists chose a straightforward title for their research: “Marine Extinction Risk From Climate Warming.” But as publication approached, something nagged at them. Their findings illustrated two drastically different outcomes for ocean life…
By Dino Grandoni 04/21/22
About 17 nautical miles south of Nantucket, a half-dozen New England Aquarium researchers scrambled across this vessel’s icy deck. Clutching binoculars, clipboards and cameras, they strained to catch a glimpse and scribble notes about a…
By Julia Jacobo 02/12/22
The world's biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns. And while that "doom and gloom" is the typical discourse surrounding how climate change is affecting biodiversity,…
By Katie Hunt 02/11/22
Thousands of birds die each spring and fall when they collide with Chicago's skyscrapers, which lie on a major migration path between Canada and Latin America. But the birds don't die in vain. Since the…
By Lori Rozsa 12/07/21
A record manatee die-off in Florida this year has become so dire that federal officials are taking a once unthinkable step — feeding the wild marine mammals to help them survive the winter...
By Miriam Berger 11/24/21
“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” Jane Austen wrote in the opening lines of “Pride and Prejudice,” “that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Social…
By Michael Wright 11/17/21
As the East End mopes its way through a third-straight disastrous bay scallop season — desperate scallop lovers are forking over upwards of $45 per pound for cousins of the Peconic Bay scallop, imported from…
By Dino Grandoni 09/29/21
The “Lord God Bird” is dead. The ivory-billed woodpecker, a ghostly bird whose long-rumored survival in the bottomland swamps of the South has haunted seekers for generations, will be officially declared extinct by U.S. officials…
By Scott Wilson 09/13/21
For centuries, spring-run Chinook salmon, among California’s most iconic fish, would rest for weeks in these historically cold waters after their brutal upstream journey. Then they would lay eggs and, finally, perish to complete one…
By Louis Sahagún 08/18/21
It was just before sunrise in July when the botanists Naomi Fraga and Maria Jesus threw on backpacks and crunched their way across a brittle alkaline flat in the hottest corner of the Mojave Desert.…
By Francesco Bassetti 08/22/20
Killing the world’s largest animal grew into a global trade in the sixteenth century when Basque whalers developed important technological improvements that allowed for commercial whaling. Since then whales have been driven to the brink…
