One Step Forward, Two Missteps Back

Conservation work will potentially be undone by climate change

Posted at 1:53 PM on 29 Jan 2008

Habitat preservation is a noble cause -- so it's really too bad that many conservation efforts may end up rendered moot by climate change. For example, restoration of Pacific Northwest salmon runs won't do much good if warming makes streams unlivable; restoring fresh water flow in the Everglades will be somewhat pointless if sea-level rise swamps the wetlands. "We have over a 100-year investment nationally in a large suite of protected areas that may no longer protect the target ecosystems for which they were formed," says Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences. So conservationists face multiple dilemmas: Should they stop focusing on restoration of current habitat? Should they let nature -- in its human-amped state -- take its course, and just accept that some flora and fauna won't survive? Should they consider moving plants and animals into new areas? When does that become necessary, and what will be the repercussions? Says Hamilton, "Our whole strategy is going to have to shift."

source: The New York Times

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Comments: (3 comments)

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need for positive

Well it is our responsibility to do as much as possible. Simply because it was not the animals nor the plants that caused much of the damage.

We are always negatively interfering, (building more, polluting more, killing more, cutting trees more, destroying more). So maybe its time to interfere in a responsible and positive way!

But I think "responsibility" is trait that seems very difficult to for humans! I hope when I am an old woman I will look back and see that I was wrong.

I hope most humans do care enough to take responsibility our planet and all that live in it!

I only have this one life, so I am going to try my very best to make a positive change. --- The Happy & Healthy Vegan ---

by javaearth at 3:03 PM on 29 Jan 2008

Bring It Back -- To 4 Billion BC!

What I really miss (miss and in its somewhere in my DNA's collective memory) is the good old days when the Earth was just forming and was a molten mass of fluid rock.

It's been downhill ever since then. Any "conservation effort" should try to return the Earth to a more natural climate -- one with swirling hot hydrocarbons.

by jabailo at 5:16 PM on 29 Jan 2008

one step forward...

It is not only conservation efforts that will come to naught, but the drivers of wasteful consumption who will also suffer from Global Warming Syndrome. Disaster, on Frost's little cat feet, will come creeping, then spring suddenly upon them. The big difference is that the green people are at least aware of the scope of the problem developing in the out-of-the-way places, while the others continue blissfully on their profligate way, unaware of or denying its reality.

Arguing for or against solar changes, human intervention, interior heat, and so on will make not a whit of difference to the resulting crisis. Global Warming is real and it is imminent. Too bad its cumulative effects will touch everybody.

Des Emery

by Des Emery at 7:12 PM on 29 Jan 2008

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