Governments may need to abandon efforts to save certain animals in particular areas when faced with the effects of climate change and habitat loss, scientists say.
The University of Queensland and scientists from the CSIRO said that for the first time they have measured the relationship between climate change and habitat loss and how it impacts on plants and animals on a global scale.
When you combine the two, they discovered potentially “catastrophic” effects.
“Human population growth has caused significant habitat degradation across the globe, typically in support of agriculture and urban development,” lead researcher Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle from University of Queensland said in a statement.
“This alone has negatively impacted many species, but combined with rises in temperature and reduced rainfall as a result of a changing climate, there could be catastrophic results for some populations.”
Ms Mantya-Pringle said that in areas where the effects of climate change and habitat loss were severe, current efforts to manage the problem could be inadequate.
“More proactive management strategies such as moving species, engineering habitat, and even abandoning our efforts to save certain species in one area in favour of other areas may be more effective.”
The scientists findings were recently published in the journal Global Change Biology.
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