At the brink of extinction - How climate change is threatening wildlife
- By Danyal Ur Rehman -
- Oct 18, 2022
While the effects of climate change are causing human destruction around the world, animals and birds are also affected by it, but how does climate change affect animals and why is it important for us to know?
Zoologist dr. Solaha Rahman shed light on the changing pattern of animals due to climate change, “Animals like to live in a place where food and shelter are available, when the temperature starts rising they change their location to a colder place”, she said.
A senior teacher and researcher at Karachi University’s Institute of Environmental Studies, doctor Zafar Iqbal Shams regretted that because of urban development we remove the existing plantation instead of expanding more trees to reduce the effects of the city’s increasing temperature, which also forces birds to migrate to the cooler places.
“Because so many birds rely on insects, taking down trees also removes their food source. This upsets the food chain”, he said.
Stop Feeding Pigeons
People usually feed the common pigeon — also known as the blue rock at the traffic signals and consider it a good cause, but this practice poses a serious safety problem in several ways.
“There are many feeders around town that help the pigeon population grow.” said dr. Shams. “Bird droppings can cause different types of diseases, some diseases may be transmitted through direct contact with these excreta or the inhalation of aerosols from dried excrement,” he added.
Zoologist Roohi Kanwal said that pigeons have become a pest and this is a bad news for other birds. She also feels that human interference has added to the problem of proliferation. In addition to being very flexible, birds also need to obtain food.
There are some animals, especially birds, that change their place due to the change of weather, but there are many animals that are found only in a few specific places and do not leave their place. And if the climate of that place starts to change suddenly and they are not getting their food, then the species of this animal starts to extinct slowly.
“The drastic change of weather highly impacts some animals’ breeding process and their population starts declining, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species, more than 41,000 species are threatened with extinction,” dr. Solaha said.
Climate change may lead to the extinction of many animals around the world. If humans manage to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030, droughts, floods and widespread animal extinctions could be avoided.