Meet the contenders, vote for your favorite, and help us decide this year’s winner!

Swallowtail Butterflies

Swallowtail butterfly. National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Martha Hitchiner.

Swallowtail Butterfly. National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by John Kinney.

Chipmunks

National Wildlife Photo Contest Entry by William Heban.

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Danny Brown.

The American Goldfinch

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Lara Hardesty.

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Gregory Fisher.

Hummingbirds

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by David Bahr.

National Wildlife Photo Contest entry by Chris Zink.

These photos were donated by participants in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 43rd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

In case you haven’t been convinced by our blogs on how the fiscal cliff would harm Wildlife Refuges, public lands, hunting and fishing, and wetlands, among other programs, take a look at this infographic on how badly the fiscal cliff could harm just one state: Ohio, home to much of the fragile Great Lakes region.

For NWF’s latest fiscal cliff materials, see NWF.org/FiscalCliff.

Don’t let our budget crisis hurt the Great Lakes! Do your part today to protect our wildlife and natural resources.

New Mexico forests in the southwestern part of the state are often like this: the ponderosa pines stand above the piñon and juniper trees, creating this marvelous sentry appearance. Photo by Avelino Maestas.

So when my friend Garret in New Mexico shared this article in Scientific American, I was disheartened. It describes an experiment being conducted in Bandolier National Monument, wherein juniper and piñon pine trees are subjected to higher temperatures and lower water levels:

Inside the chambers, temperatures climb 9 degrees Fahrenheit above the desert’s already blistering averages. Meanwhile, precipitation, never abundant in this corner of the country, is cut by half.

Those are the kinds of conditions we can expect this century if greenhouse gas emissions continues unabated, and the results of the experiment aren’t promising for forests in the Southwest. According to researcher Nathan McDowell, junipers and piñons won’t fare well if temperatures rise:

However, in the face of the kind of sustained “superdrought” some climatologists predict will occur toward the end of this century, both species would be heavily affected, he said. ”If we had a significant, prolonged drought in the future, we might actually lose both of them,” he said. “We could see a lot of the areas that are forests today become grasslands.”

The deadliest impact on the trees won’t likely come from the extreme heat and drought directly. Rather, the plants will become more susceptible to insect infestation and diseases. As documented in our recent report Ruined Summer, heat waves; warming rivers, lakes, and streams; floods; drought; wildfires; and insect and pest infestations driven by climate change are wreaking havoc on our wildlife and wild places.

Multiple Threats are Compounded by Climate Change

As we noted earlier this year, forests that are stressed by climate change are especially susceptible to pine bark beetles. Normally, beetles play a role in maintaining healthy forests. However, when trees are threatened by excessive heat and drought pine bark beetles can decimate forests. In addition, they become a true epidemic for forests after warm winters, when fewer beetles perish from cold. These beetles thrive in warmer temperatures, and drought-weakened trees have little defense against the invaders. Beetles have already killed untold millions of trees across North America.

Wildfire-scorched remnants of the 2011 Las Conchas Fire. Flickr photo by dangerousmeta.

The loss of forests in the Southwest would have an incredible impact on wildlife. Forests in New Mexico and Arizona are home to myriad species of wildlife—in the Gila National Forest alone you can find black bears, mountain lions, elk, deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and red-tailed hawks. A number of endangered species also call the Gila home, including the “Gila trout, Mexican Gray Wolf, Mexican Spotted Owl, Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, Chiricahua leopard frog, spikedace and loach minnow.”

It’s time we stood up for wildlife and and push for greater action to combat climate change. You can do your part now by pledging to Vote Wildlife Friendly during this year’s election.

U.S. Forest Service Photo by Kari Greer

I spent four years as a journalist in southwest New Mexico, and covered my share of wildfires. Fires that make the news are often those that threaten communities or can’t be managed by forestry officials. However, wildfire can be essential to the healthy life cycle of forests and other ecosystems. Tens of thousands of fires are sparked every year, and while officials often choose to contain them others are left to burn out on their own.

An Escalating Cycle

In New Mexico, your typical fire season is pretty predictable: precipitation in winter and early spring leads to aggressive growth (especially for high desert grasses). Rainfall tapers off until mid-summer, leaving an abundance of dry fuel, warm air and high winds. Fire conditions are dangerous until mid-summer, when seasonal monsoons bring almost-daily rainstorms to the area.

Unfortunately, climate change is throwing this cycle into chaos. Wildfire frequency, severity and damages are increasing throughout the West as a result of rising temperatures, drying conditions and more lightning brought by global warming.

While no single event can be attributed to climate change, it’s hard to deny Whitewater-Baldy had some help in becoming the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. Below average precipitation this past winter and spring–especially in southwest New Mexico–set the stage for the fire. Forest officials believe lightning strikes kindled the Baldy Fire back on May 9 and the Whitewater Fire on May 16, in a rugged and remote area of the Gila National Forest. These quickly merged into the megafire now raging through the Gila Wilderness, driven by bone-dry conditions and high winds.

Unfortunately, these conditions are not unique to southern New Mexico. With extreme drought conditions widespread, Colorado and Arizona are preparing for the worst, seeing the Whitewater-Baldy fire as a harbinger of what’s to come. Utah and Nevada are experiencing severe drought as well, and fire season has just begun.

Wildlife at Risk

Mexican Gray Wolf. Photo by Jim Clark/US FWS.

Megafires–like the Whitewater-Baldy Complex and 2011′s Bastrop County Complex–can wipe out vast swaths of wildlife habitat. Often, containment of smaller fires exacerbates the destruction of megafires: excessive fuel is built up for years and years until a massive conflagration spreads beyond control. One biologist in Texas said this was a contributing factor to the Bastrop County Complex Fire. Time will tell whether the Houston toad will recover from that event.

Already, a team is on the ground in New Mexico exploring the areas of forest destroyed by the Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire:

A Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team is currently performing a thorough assessment of the Whitewater-Baldy Complex burn area. The BAER team is staffed by trained professionals including; hydrologists, soil scientists, engineers, biologists, silviculturists, range conservationists and archeologists.  This team will evaluate the burned area and prescribe treatments to protect the land quickly and effectively.

Millions Spent and Lives Lost

The growth of the Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire has been explosive: on most days, the fire spread by between 10,000-20,000 acres, with two days of 40,000+ acres burned. Financially, more than $12 million has been pumped into containment. While injuries in New Mexico have thankfully been light, firefighting tragically claimed two lives this week with the crash of a private air tanker in Utah on Sunday. Another tanker touched down on malfunctioning landing gear that same day. As a result, tankers were grounded across the country, which will hamper efforts to contain the wildfires.

These setbacks are the latest obstacles to effective firefighting in recent years. Since 2010, more than $512 million in funding cuts have been shepherded through Congress, affecting everything from supplies to prevention efforts. The number of aircraft available for firefighting has also fallen, from 44 to 14 in the past ten years.

Annual firefighting costs for the  federal government frequently top $1 billion. With unchecked climate change, these costs will continue to rise, from the human toll in lives lost and homes destroyed to the impacts on wildlife and the billions spent fighting fires and repairing ecosystems.

Send a message to the Environmental Protection Agency in support of carbon pollution limits.