Will changes in climate wipe out mammals in Arctic and sub-Arctic areas?

AlphaGalileo: The climate changes depicted by climatologists up to the year 2080 will benefit most mammals that live in northern Europe’s Arctic and sub-Arctic land areas today if they are able to reach their new climatic ranges. This is the conclusion drawn by ecologists at Umeå University in a recently published article in the journal Plos ONE.

The scientists Anouschka Hof, Roland Jansson, and Christer Nilsson of the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science at Umeå University investigated how future climate changes may come to impact mammals in northern Europe’s Arctic and sub-Arctic land areas, excluding the Arctic seas and islands. These land masses are assumed to undergo major changes in climate, and their natural ecology is also regarded as especially susceptible to changes.

By modeling the distribution of species, the researchers have determined that the predicted climate changes up to the year 2080 will benefit most mammals that live in these areas today, with the exception of some specialists in cold climate, such as the Arctic fox and the lemming.

“This will be the case only on the condition that the species can reach the areas that take on the climate these animals are adapted to. We maintain that it is highly improbable that all mammals will be able to do so, owing partly to the increased fragmentation of their living environments caused by human beings. Such species will reduce the extent of their distribution instead,” says Christer Nilsson, professor of landscape ecology.

The researchers also show that even if climate changes as such do not threaten the majority of Arctic and sub-Arctic mammals, changes in the species mix may do so, for instance because predators and their potential prey that previously did not live together may wind up in the same areas....

A reindeer shot near Svalbard by Per Harald Olsen (Perhols), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

25% of mammals at risk of extinction

Live Science: About one in four mammal species are at risk of extinction, and the Western black rhino has officially been declared extinct, according to a new assessment of biodiversity by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and partners.

The reassessments of several rhinoceros species show that the subspecies of the subspecies of the white rhino in central Africa — called the Northern white rhino (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) — is currently teetering on the brink of extinction and has been listed as "Possibly Extinct in the Wild." A subspecies of Javan rhino (Rhinoceros sondaicus annasmiticus) is probably extinct, following the poaching of what is thought to be the last animal in Vietnam in 2010. While this doesn't mean the end of the Javan rhino, it reduces the species to a single, declining population on the island of Java.

The assessment also showed an alarming 40 percent of Madagascar's terrestrial reptiles are threatened. The 22 Madagascan species currently identified as critically endangered, which include chameleons, geckoes, skinks and snakes, are now a conservation challenge, researchers say. New conservation areas being designated in Madagascar are expected to help conserve a significant proportion of these critically endangered species, such as Tarzan's chameleon (Calumma tarzan), the bizarre-nosed chameleon (Calumma hafahafa) and the limbless skink (Paracontias fasika)....

White Rhino at Lake Nakuru National park in Kenya, shot by Angela Sevin, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license