Climate Change on Biodiversity

Nearly everyone has heard of climate change and its adverse effects: increasing global temperatures, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, etc. Less people, however, know about the more niche effects. In this article, we are going to be discussing one of these niche effects: climate change’s effect on biodiversity.

Specifically, the nation of Sri Lanka is well known for having a luscious enviornment with thriving wildlife, specifically, with reptiles. Despite this, climate change is hitting hard Sri Lanka with changes in air temperature, water temperature, rainfall, and sea level. Currently however, none of these danger signs are being addressed properly. Already, over 25 species of reptiles are endangered in Sri Lanka and the effects of climate change may just be the tipping point to extinction. These species include different kinds of snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, etc.

Climate change hurts wildlife outside of reptiles as well, in particular, ocean life. An assessment from Arctis Search found that there are over 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of undiscovered natural gas liquids in the Arctic. With climate change increasing global temperatures, the ice containing the gasoline slowly thaws down with it. When the gasoline leaks into the ocean, there are catestrophic effects. According to USA Oceana, “Toxic gases will damage the bodies of fish that come into contact by damaging their gills and causing internal damage.” This is especially problematic because larger fish who depend on these fish for food also drop in population due to a lack of food supply. This cycle eventually makes it all the way up the food chain causing a collapse and massive decrease in populations of all species. This domino effect will directly affect larger creatures as well including humans. The lack of supply will cause massive price increases due to the shortages of food.

While the other, more known, effects of climate change are also important to solve, the smaller, less known, issues should also recieve immediate attention. After all, they too can have large scale impacts.