Global warming hits African wildlife
The Mara-Serengeti ecosystem, which includes Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, is one of the most famous and wildliferich areas in Africa.
Although we all show concern or pay lip service on increasing phenomena of climate change, there is lack of discussions or community mobilisation as to how to conserve environment and curb the phenomena of global warming, feels Shivangini Singh.
Singh was the part of 13-day Antarctica Expedition hosted by Robert Swan, Climate Force and The Explorer’s Passage in which over 90 individuals from across the world participated to generate leadership for climate change.
Having experienced the effects of global warming on living organisms in uninhabited cold desert of Antarctica, Singh feels that new initiatives are required for preserving the environment and natural resources for future generations.
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A native of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh and presently working as an application developer in Bengaluru, she said the global warming is not only causing shifts in weather patterns, “But it is also threatening various living organisms, some of whom are on the verge of extinction.”
In Antarctica, we observed that the population of the Adelie and Chinstrap penguin species are currently declining while the population of Gentoo species is increasing,” she said.
In the past, the temperature was a lot cooler with abundance of adequate food source for Krills. However, the rising mercury had not only reduced their habitat but it had also resulted in significant reduction in the population of their food source, she said.
On the other hand, Gentoo penguins are thriving as they can survive in warmer climate and they happen to rely on fish too which eats krill.
“These are some of the dangerous phenomena apart from glaciers melting which are causing rise in sea level,” Singh said. Government, volunteer agencies and communities, need to engage in afforestation to bring about change where open spaces that donned green cover, are turning into concrete jungles.
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