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Climate Migration
Tue May 13, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Throughout the Earth's history, climate changes have forced plants and animals to migrate with
the temperature. But now, as humans have come to dominate the landscape, these species are
losing places to go. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook's weekly segment
on global climate change.
Dr. Camille Parmesan, assistant professor at the University of Texas and a member of working
group II for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells us why this is such a
problem.
CP: For a lot of species they can shift northward and maintain the same climate, and that's
what happened during a lot of the glacial and inter-glacial cycles. The problem now is that
humans dominate the landscape and an awful lot of species, if they try to shift northward,
they're shifting into the cornbelt of Illinois and Iowa, areas that are absolutely not
habitable because the landscape has been transformed by humans.
And when a species is not able to adapt to the changing climate it faces extinction.
CP: One thing that we can do is to start looking at our reserve systems to try and see if
they're adequate enough to allow corridors of movement for plants and animals to go from one
wild area to the next reserve area. And, you can also think in terms of taking, say,
agricultural areas or ranching areas and encouraging ranchers and farmers to leave parts of
their land un-pesticided, that, in themselves, are not really habitats for wild species, at
least they're corridors through which species can move and not be killed.
Our series on global climate change is supported by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation. Thanks today to Assistant Produce
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