Defenders Magazine

Wild Life: A Warm Feeling All Over

© Pete Oxford/Minden Pictures

A Warm Feeling All Over

Lemurs in Madagascar and gray jays in North America may live oceans away from each other, but they have at least one thing in common: They're both feeling the ill effects of global warming.

For the endangered lemur species known as Milne-Edward's sifakas (left), it could mean the difference between survival and extinction. A 20-year study in Madagascar sponsored by Earthwatch found that even subtle changes in climate harm sifakas. In drier years, older females were unable to produce the milk their infants needed, leading to higher infant mortality.

"With deforestation and habitat fragmentation increasing daily in the region, as well as global warming, the immediate effects are the drying out of habitats like the rainforest of Ranomafana National Park," says Patricia Wright, leader of the study and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York. "I was shocked to see the effect of rainfall decreases of such small magnitude on the survival of infant sifakas. The implications are huge in a world full of endangered species."

The study also found a decline in greater bamboo lemurs. Fewer than 100 individuals of this species remain, making it extremely vulnerable to extinction from habitat changes, says Wright.

Meanwhile gray jays, which stockpile food to survive winter, are dying out in the southern portion of their range in Ontario, Canada, because warming temperatures are rotting their caches. Gray jays nest earlier than other birds and rely on stored food to feed their young. "Warm autumns are benign for most birds, but gray jays rely on cold storage to preserve their food, so warm weather in autumn leads to delayed and less successful breeding months later," says Tom Waite, an Ohio State University professor who, with colleague Danny Strickland, has studied the birds for 25 years. They found that these birds produce fewer young in years following warmer autumns. "The jays appear caught in an ecological trap set by climate warming," says Waite.

Lemurs and jays are not the only creatures paying the price of global warming. A recent British government report for the first time puts a monetary figure on the costs of climate change.

Written by a senior British government economist, the report estimated that if governments fail to act now, the havoc caused by unchecked global warming could eventually cost as much as 20 percent of the global gross domestic product each year. In contrast, taking action to reduce carbon emissions today would cost a fraction of that amount (about 1 percent of the global gross domestic product). The message: Taking action to prevent global warming now cannot only prevent an ecological disaster, it can stave off an economical disaster as well.

How Low Can They Go?

In the unassisted category—no weights, no bags, no nose-plugs and no goggles—the Cuvier's beaked whale (right) has broken the world record for the deepest dive by an air-breathing animal. Zoologists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution studying a group of 10 Cuvier's beaked whales in the Ligurian Sea (an arm of the Mediterranean between Italy and France) found the animals could dive as deep as 6,230 feet. The descent knocks sperm whales, which can plunge to about 4,000 feet, off their deep-sea pedestal.

Germany Goes Wild

Here's a storybook ending on a Grimm tale: The so-called "big, bad wolf" is back in eastern Germany.

Once maligned and feared—thanks in part to Brothers Grimm fairytales—wolves were wiped out in Germany after a centuries-long extermination campaign. The last one was shot in 1904.

But today, with rising public acceptance and protection measures in place under a reunified Germany, European gray wolves (above) —slightly smaller and leaner than their American counterparts—have made their way across rivers separating Germany from Poland and from other parts of eastern Europe.

"Currently, we have two packs of wolves in Saxony—with a total of four adults, three to six yearlings and possibly up to 13 pups," says Robert Kless of the International Fund for Animal Welfare Germany. "But the German wolf population is still much too small. New wolves from the big populations in eastern Europe are crucial to continue to refresh the gene pool."

Shifting human populations have eased the wolf's return. More than 1.5 million people have left eastern Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And many of those that stayed in the former communist state have moved from rural areas to big cities. These trends, along with lower birthrates, are creating vacant areas for wolves to roam—abandoned strip-mining sites and military training grounds, for example.

Wolves are also trickling west into other countries, such as Austria and France. But modern-day Little Red Riding Hoods needn't worry. Just like in the United States, there is no documented case in Europe of a healthy wild wolf ever killing a human.

Over-Terning a Flight Record

Sooty shearwaters (right) have caused quite a flap in the birding world. Researchers who tagged the seabirds at two breeding colonies in New Zealand tracked shearwaters to feeding grounds in Alaska, California and Japan and then back home to New Zealand—an amazing 40,000-mile annual journey. Birders long believed the Arctic tern, which breeds in the Arctic and travels to Antarctica, held the migratory marathon medal. But as these birds "only" cover 20,000 miles a year, things didn't "tern" out as planned.

From the Top Down

Zion without the cougar is like Yellowstone without the wolf.

When wolves disappeared from the Yellowstone ecosystem in the early 1900s, severe ecological damage followed as unchecked elk overgrazed aspen groves. Now researchers from Oregon State University are finding the absence of cougars (right) is having a similar effect on the ecology of Zion National Park in Utah.

When Zion became a popular attraction beginning in the early 1900s, the presence of tourists began scaring off cougars. With their natural enemies gone, deer began to multiply and eat young cottonwood trees almost as quickly as they sprouted.

"That set in motion a long cascade of changes that resulted in the loss of most cottonwoods along the stream banks and heavy bank erosion," says Robert Beschta, professor emeritus at Oregon State University. "But the end result isn't just loss of trees," he says. "It's the decline or disappearance of shrubs, wetland plants, amphibians, lizards, wildflowers and even butterflies."

Their findings show that it cannot only get lonely at the top but at the bottom, too, when it comes to predators and ecosystem health.