Isn’t it funny how everyone claims to love animals yet very little of us care about how our actions affect their lives? Today, we discuss how European wildlife has been drastically affected by global warming. Humans aren’t the only living things on this planet. We live our lives breathing the same air as the animal kingdom.
Our actions affect them in ways that most people don’t realize. You’ve probably seen videos of sea turtles whose shells did not develop well because they swam into soda rings. You’ve even probably seem videos about the effects of oil spills on avian life. What most people tend to not remember is the drastic effect that man-made global warming has on animals.
Weather extremes wipe out their food
Droughts kill plant life. The drastic lack of plant life causes the death of herbivores. The death of herbivores means that carnivores do not have food either. It’s a vicious path that we’ve sadly seen before.
Ocean acidification really messes up plankton populations. If you do not realize, plankton is the preferred food of millions of species of marine life. If the plankton doesn’t grow properly, a cascade occurs that will end up hurting humans in the long-run.
Shifting climate destroys habitats
If you ever wanted to see how fast climate change can affect our ecosystem, go look at some corals. Coral bleaching is a response to severely warm temperatures. In certain areas in the world, coral bleaching has gotten so bad that over 70% of corals simply die.
When corals die, fish have nowhere to live. When the ice caps melt because of global warming, this raises the sea levels. When sea levels go up, they can error beaches and shores wherein sea turtles lay their eggs.
Which animals are most at risk?
In a general sense, all of them are at risk. However, there are some that truly risk dying out more than others. Some of these are: polar bears and sea turtles.
Something truly needs to be done
This is the only planet we have and the animals we share the planet with don’t have much of a choice on where they live. So if we continuously disregard our environment, we slowly but surely build up the ways in which we decide to kill off ourselves and our planet.
If you have any causes near and dear to your heart, share them with us!
