What does climate change mean for wildlife?

So what does climate change mean for our wildlife?

Almost half of plant and animal species in the world's most naturally rich areas such as the amazon and the galapagos Islands could face local extinction by the turn of the century due to climate change if carbon emissions continue to rise unchecked. Even if global warming is limited to 2°C, these places could lose 25% of their species.

Different species will be affected in different ways.

Animals such as african elephants need to drink between 150-300 litres a day. But with hotter temperatures comes less rain and more droughts, affecting their survival rate. This will be a big problem due to the African elephant is already vulnerable, with numbers at 415,000 this will cause a big decline in their numbers, taking them into endangered and possible critically endangered.

African wild dogs will only hunt during cooler times of the day, so with climate change there will be less of those cooler hours, which will have a big impact on their survival as they won't be able to hunt for as long or as much, meaning less food for them and lowering their survival rates.

Marine life such as turtles will be affected. As the world warms so does the sand. The sex of turtles depends on the temperature of the sand. Cool sand creates males and warmer sand creates females. So there will be more females than males, making it harder to reproduce.

There are many species within the Artic that relies on the sea ice to hunt. Such as polar bears, narwhal and walruses. So less sea ice makes it harder for these species to hunt. By 2100, polar bears could face starvation and failure to reproduce. In 2019, there were polar bears in Russia that was spotted going into several towns and villages looking for food.

Plants like bamboo will also affect species such as giant pandas. This is because warmer temperatures cause the bamboo to produce less nutrition, meaning the pandas won't get enough nutrition from the bamboo they eat.