What Happens When Animals Lose Their Habitat

As Climatic change Destroys their Habitats, These Animals Are on the Move

Published December 3, 2020 at eight:30 AM CST

As natural disasters continue to batter America'due south coasts and devastate crops, animals are in danger of losing their natural habitats. But there is hope — country on the banks of the Mississippi river is acting as a sanctuary for animals fleeing the effects of climate alter.

On the Illinois side of Lock and Dam 13, Ayers Sand Prairie Land Nature Preserve is simply one of many stops forth what scientists are calling "Natural Highways." They're stretches of various landscapes resilient to climatic change, and the Nature Conservancy has mapped where they connect across the contiguous Usa.

Jeff Walk is Director of Conservation Programs for the Nature Conservancy in Illinois. He says these regions are uniquely suited to conditions climate change because of their biodiversity, and the Natural Highways project looks to preserve its variety of found life and soil types."Rather than trying to predict what types of changes might happen to the climate, looking at it from the perspective of: what are the areas that are likely to sustain a diversity of plants, animals, fish, wildelife, regardless of what happens with climatic change? And so, this is an analysis that looks at a couple of things. Looking for neighborhoods, if you will, that provide a lot of options for different places of plants and animals to survive, looking at areas that have an interesting mix of slope, aspect, dissimilar soil types, for example, sandy areas, clay soils, limestone outcrops, are some of the examples from our area."Some animals are already on the move — like the family unit of armadillos Walker's staff establish in Shawnee National Forest — and some are just starting their journey beyond these Natural Highways."One species that I think about in the context of this particular analysis is the Eastern Box Turtle, cute little woodland turtle, thoroughly common in the southern half of Illinois, across Missouri, and could movement northward, only would need important corridors like the woodlands along the Mississippi river for them to get to more forested landscapes, similar we might meet in Wisconsin and Minnesota, for instance."Walker says the agronomical mural of Iowa and Illinois — the rows of flat country, uniform soil type, and a lack of various constitute life — makes it harder for animals like the Eastern Box Turtle to navigate the Natural Highways. That's why the Nature Conservancy is narrowing the focus of its conservation efforts on land that connects animals to more than sustainable habitats.

Randy Nybour stands in the center of Ayers Sand Prairie Nature Preserve.

Like Ayers Sand Prairie, just northward of the Quad Cities. Randy Nybour, Managing director of Field Surveys, has been involved in nature conservation for over forty years. He says the expanse is a respite from the surrounding agricultural mural."Just great habitat blocks that used to comprehend the entire state that but aren't here anymore," Nybour says. "Yous know, a lot of these species adapted to this stuff originally, and they've ever found safe havens or been able to use the areas that accept been affected like this. I'thousand sure it knocks back some of the populations, but for the most part, they seem to be able to respond, and the more habitat isles like these that nosotros accept, the better they're going to be able to come up back."Nybour was at Morrison Country Park when the derecho hit in Baronial. He says he'due south never seen anything like it. It destroyed power lines and the park's forested areas, including oaks that help warblers migrate in the spring. But the sand prairie was left in-tact.The storm hitting during the peak of Monarch butterfly migration in Illinois, but Nybour says numbers from early September showed a good number of the monarchs had survived the air current storm."We were actually concerned we were going to lose a lot of those butterflies considering of the force of the winds and that sort of thing, just I think because the spring was somewhat delayed, the butterflies got here a little bit later from down in United mexican states, that when that derecho hit, there were a lot of the monarchs that were in the caterpillar stage and in the chrysalis phase."Regions like the Ayers Sand Prairie don't but assistance animals. Since they're usually located along rivers and streams, they assist to stabilize the soil and filter drinking h2o. Maintaining water quality in those streams helps animals discover their mode to larger sustainable habitats and keeps the h2o in reservoirs safe to drink for people across the Midwest.