5 ways climate change impacts wildlife

You may already be feeling the heat from climate change. But have you ever wondered what all this change is doing to the animals and plants around you? 

Climate change reaches every part of the planet and touches every living thing. It’s transforming habitats and ecosystems, leaving many animals and plants struggling to adapt.

1. Extreme heat

Animals can suffer from dehydration and heat stress in hot weather, with some Arctic seabirds dying on their nests on sunny days.

Warmer waters around the Great Barrier Reef in Australia have caused five mass bleaching events since 2016. Heat makes corals release the algae that lives inside their tissue. The colourful algae is the corals’ main food source. Without it, they turn white and slowly starve.

2. Extreme weather

Climate change isn’t just turning up the heat. It’s making our weather more extreme. Intense heat waves, storms, floods, and wildfires happen more than they did before, putting wildlife in harm’s way.

For instance, more heavy rainfalls cause more floods. Floods damage the homes of Pacific salmon and destroy their eggs. They leave the salmon stranded in pools cut off from rivers when the flood waters dry.

Wildfires are also a serious challenge for wildlife. During a wildfire, large and fast animals may escape by running or flying away. But many smaller or slower animals (like frogs, turtles, snakes, and small mammals) hide. If they survive the flames, they are at risk of heat exhaustion, lack of oxygen, smoke inhalation, and dehydration.

Learn more about extreme weather by reading Heat waves, wildfires, storms, flooding, and climate change – what’s the connection?

3. Life cycles out of sync with the seasons

Animals often take cues from their environment when making important decisions, like when to migrate or reproduce. Any big changes in weather patterns can change the rhythm of these life events.

Almost three quarters of the birds in Canada migrate. Now some birds are arriving here earlier because of warmer spring temperatures. Mountain bluebirds come 19 days earlier than they did 60 years ago. It can be risky! If the bluebirds arrive too early, a late snowstorm can kill them.

The queen western bumble bee faces the same problem. Warmer winter or spring temperatures can pull her out of hibernation too early. A sudden cold snap might kill her. She may also starve because the plants she needs to survive aren’t blooming yet.

Canada jays are here all winter and they don’t hibernate. They depend on food, like berries and insects, that they stored in trees before the winter came. Warmer temperatures are spoiling this stored food. If it spoils too much, the jays have fewer eggs that hatch and unhealthy babies.

4. Changing habitats

Extreme weather and rising temperatures change the places where animals live, so some animals are moving to new places. One study found that many land animals are moving north by about 16.9 kilometres every ten years.

You may not always like your new neighbours! We call a species invasive when it is new to an area and causes harm once there. It may compete with native species for food, shelter, and space. It may also introduce new diseases to the area. Warmer winters have allowed deer ticks (blacklegged ticks) to move farther north and stay active for longer periods of time, making Lyme disease more common in areas like Ontario.

5. Biodiversity loss

Unfortunately, not all species are able to adapt to climate change or move to a new neighbourhood. One million species are at risk of becoming extinct within the next few decades. Climate change is one of the main reasons.

As we lose wildlife, we also lose biodiversity – the tremendous variety of species on earth. Biodiversity is critical to life on this planet. Species rely on each other, supplying one another with shelter and food. When one species goes extinct or its population numbers change, this impacts other species and could put them at risk.

Biodiversity loss and climate change – a vicious cycle

Climate change hurts wildlife and makes biodiversity loss worse. But did you know that biodiversity loss also makes climate change worse?

The land and water absorb around half of the carbon dioxide pollution humans put into the air. We lose some of this natural carbon sink when we destroy forests, mangroves, peatlands, or kelp beds. And with more carbon dioxide in the air, our planet gets warmer and the climate changes faster.

We can’t slow climate change if we don’t also fix the nature crisis.

We can start by protecting nature in Canada, and you can call on the government to do more. Canada’s government needs to create a strong nature protection law in cooperation with Indigenous Peoples, whose knowledge is important for taking good care of the land.