The charity Rewilding Britain has advised that the UK habitats of many wild species need to be joined up to allow them to travel north by up to 3 miles per year because of global warming. Travelling north allows them to move to a cooler climate to which they are adapted. Staying where they are may lead to an increased population decline in any particular species.
They argue that the survival of many species will depend on their ability to find and move to hospitable areas. Those that can’t move across land or sea at roughly the same rate as their climate zone are likely to decline and be at increased extinction risk.
Rewilding Britain wants the British government to ensure that at least 5% of the country is returned to the wild and that land and sea corridors are created in 25% of habitat so that plants and animals can move through their habitat to a cooler climate. They argue that this could save 1/5 of species from “climate-driven habitat loss”.
Comment: this is an interesting suggestion for me. It also implies, incidentally, that people will also move north. After all, people are the human-animal. Parts of the planet will become too hot and uninhabitable for people. They will move north. I would predict increased immigration from Africa, for instance, to Europe as a consequence. Currently a lot of immigration from the south to Europe is due to economic reasons and in some cases conflict. I would suggest that those two reasons you could add global warming. In America I’d suggest that there will be a migration from states such as Texas to Montana in due course; perhaps in 25 years time when it gets really bad. This will help with global warming too as there’d be less need to use air-conditioning to cool the home.
