Global warming is pushing alpine animals to mountain peaks — and extinction, B.C. study warns

VANCOUVER—Alpine animals are being pushed higher up their mountain habitats at an alarming rate due to global warming, according to a new B.C. study.

The trend puts both plants and animals at greater risk for extinction because there is often less space at high altitudes, which can drastically reduce populations, according to Ben Freeman, lead author of the paper published in Global Ecology and Biogeography.

“It’s not like humans in cities where we can build taller and taller condo buildings,” he said.

And when there are so few individuals left in a population, normal threats like disease or an increase in predators can lead to extinction, said the post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia.

“We know that small populations don’t survive over long periods of time,” he said.

“They eventually run out of room and go extinct.”

There are exceptions, like the Vancouver Island marmot, which was saved from almost certain extinction with only 30 individuals left in the wild by a breeding program.

But conservationists aim to prevent species from reaching that desperate point where human intervention is necessary.

They have an uphill battle ahead of them, because species Indigenous to mountainous regions are being forced upslope by 100 metres for every one-degree Celsius rise in temperature, according to Freeman’s study.

The world has risen by an average of one degree Celsius in the past 30 to 40 years, Freeman added.

He and a team of researchers analyzed studies on 975 alpine plants, insects, and animals to calculate the average rate of species displacement. It is the first broad review of its kind, according to a release from UBC. Freeman said he hopes it provides other scientists around the world with baseline data for future studies.

His team did not find any relevant data for animals that live in B.C. mountains but they are likely facing similar pressures to other alpine species around the world, said Freeman.

For instance, the American pika is a small lagomorph — related to the rabbit — that lives on the North Shore mountains. Their counterparts in the American west were already driven to extinction and Vancouver-area pikas could face the same fate, said Freeman.

He said policy-makers need to consider vulnerable alpine species when approving development. Some mountain plants and animals are able to adapt by moving down the mountain instead up, as long as their way is not blocked by highways and condo buildings, he said.

“Humans come in and make the landscape less favourable — that’s when we have a big problem. The combination of human activities and climate change is what I am concerned about.”