Global warming continues to impact wildlife

Bengal_tigerTigers are a valuable species and indeed, among many others, being impacted by global warming (thanks for the tip, Puja!). According to the World Wildlife Fund, the Sundarbans delta — the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem (home to tigers), which stretches across India and Bangladesh around the Bay of Bengal — is succumbing to rising sea levels due to global warming. Global warming could do what poachers never managed: wipe out the Bengal tiger in that part of the sub-continent. Only 6,000 or so tigers remain in the wild, due to poaching, the loss of their habitat (mostly mangrove forests) and depletion of the tiger’s natural prey.

In just one century, the earth’s temperature has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, and it expected to rise by another 2-10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. As temperatures increase, local climate systems are being altered in ways that directly affect fish and wildlife, as well as forests, lakes, prairies, rivers, wetlands and other habitats upon which they depend, says National Wildlife Federation.

Colleges and universities recognize the threat to wildlife due to global warming and are taking action! The University of Missouri in Columbia, whose mascot is a tiger, is the first university to actively support conservation of critically endangered wild tigers. The Mizzou Tigers for Tigers program is a pioneering effort to raise awareness and support to ensure that there will be wild tigers for as long as there are Missouri Tigers.

 

Photo Credit: USFWS

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Published: August 3, 2006