| Title | Mountain Birds on 'Escalator to Extinction' as Planet Warms | |
| Date | Tuesday October 30 2018, @01:20PM | |
| Author | mrpg | |
| Topic | ||
| from the bad-omen dept. | ||
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Mountain birds on 'escalator to extinction' as planet warms
A meticulous re-creation of a 3-decade-old study of birds on a mountainside in Peru has given scientists a rare chance to prove how the changing climate is pushing species out of the places they are best adapted to.
Surveys of more than 400 species of birds in 1985 and then in 2017 have found that populations of almost all had declined, as many as eight had disappeared completely, and nearly all had moved to higher elevations in what scientists call "an escalator to extinction."
"Once you move up as far as you can go, there's nowhere else left," said John W. Fitzpatrick, a study author and director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. "On this particular mountain, some ridgetop bird populations were literally wiped out."
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printed from SoylentNews, Mountain Birds on 'Escalator to Extinction' as Planet Warms on 2024-04-27 20:26:17