Born to die: Climate change disrupting life cycles with fatal results

The behaviour of Britain’s wildlife is raising alarm about the seriousness of climate change as animals’ breeding patterns are thrown into confusion. The second mildest winter on record has resulted in mammals, reptiles, birds and insects emerging from shelter far too early.

They are getting caught out by cold snaps or wet weather and the young of many species are dying. Baby hedgehogs, baby squirrels, even baby grass snakes are being found in distress in many places.
The disturbing trend is emerging as climate change once again moves to the political centre stage. The Government’s long-awaited Climate Change Bill will be published next week, the Environment minister Lord Rooker announced yesterday. Delays in the preparation of the Bill have led to questions being asked about the Government’s commitment to tackling global warming.

Opposition parties fear that the Government’s proposals will not be specific enough, and have pressed for annual targets in carbon dioxide reductions.

The Environment Secretary, David Miliband, will go on the offensive over climate change next week. He will issue an undertaking to cut the UK’s carbon output by between 15 and 25 million tonnes by 2020, although he will stop short of endorsing legally binding annual targets.

The visible impact on Britain’s wildlife has manifested itself in the form of earlier than normal breeding, egg-laying, nesting and flowering of plants and trees, observed in British wildlife for more than 15 years and now linked to global warming in a whole series of scientific studies. They have sparked huge new interest in the discipline of phenology the timing of natural events.

But until now the changes have been seen as potentially harmful in the future, rather than the present. That situation seems to have changed this winter.

Climate Ark/Independent