Saving Species from Climate Change

Conservation biologists are fretting about the “pizzly” bear. That’s right - half polar bear, half grizzly. One example of the hybrid species was shot in the Canadian Arctic and confirmed by a DNA test in 2006. Maybe the cross-breed is a fluke of nature, but to Dr. Anthony Barnosky, it’s a sharp-toothed harbinger of things to come.

Dr. Barnosky is a paleoecologist at the University of California-Berkeley. In his new book Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming, he compares the combination of global warming and pre-existing ecological problems to “a wrecking ball breaking down in hours a building that took years to construct.” And he looks at what humans can do to save the animals, forests, reefs and other wild things facing extinction.

He suggests restructuring how we think about saving nature, and artificial steps we could take to save species from mass extinction, including “assisted migration” and an even more radical move involving repopulating landscapes with related species of now-extinct animals.

And from mass extinction to making way for ducklings. Each spring, farmers face a dilema: what to do with wildlife that nest in their fields over the winter. Ducks, for example, often build their nests in vetch – a cover crop that farmers plant to boost nitrogen levels. When tractors roll through to turn the soil, duck eggs get crushed along with the vetch. One family farm in the Sacramento Valley has come up with a solution. It involves an army of volunteers to scoop up the eggs and bring them to a local bird sanctuary. They call it “egg aid.” Living on Earth’s Beth Hoffman has the story. Click here to listen.

(Photo by EmmaJG via Flickr/Creative Commons)