Warming Trend Threatens Many Species, Report Says
Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 1, 2000
2000-09-01 04:00:00 PDT London -- Global warming could wipe out many
Warming Trend Threatens Many Species, Report Says
Published 4:00 am, Friday, September 1, 2000
2000-09-01 04:00:00 PDT London -- Global warming could wipe out many species of plants and animals by the end of the 21st century, the World Wide Fund for Nature said in a report issued here yesterday.
The fund, known in the United States as the World Wildlife Fund, paints a devastating picture of the ability of species, from Arctic polar bears and walruses to New England sugar maple trees, to survive unless they can migrate quickly and adapt to their new environment.
Particularly at risk, the report says, are species that are rare or live in mountainous or isolated places. Among those singled out as vulnerable are the gelada baboon in Ethiopia; the monarch butterfly, which spends winters in Mexico; the Australian mountain pygmy possum; the northern spruce in New York state; and the spoon-billed sandpiper, which breeds in the far northeastern reaches of Russia.
According to the report, up to 70 percent of the natural habitat could be lost, and 20 percent of the species rendered extinct, in the Arctic and northernmost areas of places like Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, where warming is predicted to be most rapid.
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Places farther to the south, including parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Iceland and Kyrgyzstan, could lose more than half of their natural habitat.
In the United States, the report says, more than a third of the existing habitat in Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas could be irrevocably altered by global warming.
The report is based on the often-used -- but disputed -- assumption that by the year 2100 there will have been a doubling of the emissions of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere from the level at the start of the industrial revolution.
"Rapid rates of global warming are likely to increase rates of habitat loss and species extinction, most markedly in the higher latit