Interesting article in Nature on climate vs habitat and other conservation in birds in Europe (2 Viewers)

[jurek]

Translated to practical conservation, it seems that habitat degradation / restoration, protection from hunting etc are much more important for birds in Europe than climate change. The latter in recent two decades became the dominant topic in conservation, often coming at expense of other conservation.

"Local colonisations and extinctions of European birds are poorly explained by changes in climate suitability​

We use the changing distributions of 378 European breeding bird species over 30 years to explore the putative drivers of recent range dynamics, considering the effects of climate, land cover, other environmental variables, and species’ traits on the probability of local colonisation and extinction. On average, species shifted their ranges by 2.4 km/year. These shifts, however, were significantly different from expectations due to changing climate and land cover. We found that local colonisation and extinction events were influenced primarily by initial climate conditions and by species’ range traits. By contrast, changes in climate suitability over the period were less important."

Local colonisations and extinctions of European birds are poorly explained by changes in climate suitability - Nature Communications

Species’ range shifts projections are usually based on climate and land cover variables. Here, the authors use long-term records for bird species to show that species distribution models accounting for climate and land cover often fail to predict observed range shifts.

www.nature.com

 

[S_Man]

Not a surprise, global warming has been used to hijack scientific ecology and divert attention from most environmental issues! as well as collect more taxes and create more speculation, eg Carbon Credits, etc.

And I'm not denying climate change, I'm witnessing it since the 1970's, enduring it through hotter summers, and it's obviously accelerating recently...