MOSCOW, June 29, Tatyana Pichugina. In China and Brazil, livestock die from drought or cold, fish die off the coast of America and Europe, large marine mammals are washed ashore. Scientists blame global warming and predict catastrophes. Is everything so unambiguous — in the material.
Thousands are dying
Beijing is experiencing an atypical 40-degree heat for June. Drought affects vast areas of Inner Mongolia, the provinces of Hubei and Liaoning. It is especially difficult for pasture dwellers. «Almost 200,000 people and 760,000 livestock are experiencing water shortages,» the media wrote.
At the same time, in the southwest of Brazil, where it is now winter, almost three thousand heads of cattle died from hypothermia, the veterinary department of the region said. Low temperatures for local pasture animals are not a problem. However, combined with very dry weather, strong winds and a lack of shelter, this resulted in a tragedy.
Gaining momentum began in March in Canada forest fires. As of June 21, their area amounted to nearly six million hectares, with almost three thousand fires. There has never been anything like this in the entire history of observations in the country. Adult individuals, smelling smoke, run away to open spaces, enter settlements in search of shelter and food. Residents meet polar bears, owls, wounded on window panes. Egg-layings, nestlings and small cubs perish in fire. «Many animals will leave their homes or die, populations will be reduced to a minimum or disappear,» Karen Hodges, professor of biology at the University of British Columbia, told local television.
The other day in California, sea lions and dolphins washed ashore with symptoms of intoxication: convulsions, foam at the mouth. According to experts, the reason is in the neurotoxins produced by diatom microalgae. Hundreds of marine mammals have already died. This is the most massive poisoning seen in the region. Phytoplankton blooms in the summer are common, but ocean pollution and global warming are exacerbating the process, scientists say. data-crop-ratio=»0.5625″ data-crop-width=»600″ data-crop-height=»338″ data-source-sid=»ap_photo» class=»» />
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To whom extreme heat is dangerous
The mass death of animals is increasingly blamed on global warming, against which abnormal weather phenomena occur. Scientists predict that natural disasters — prolonged heatwaves, droughts and floods — will occur with increasing frequency and intensity. Human activities have likely exacerbated this trend, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Commission on Climate Change.
“The impact of climate warming is not very noticeable in a short time period,” explains Artem Kidov, head of the Department of Zoology at the Timiryazev Russian State Agrarian University-Moscow Agricultural Academy. “Mass extinction will not occur in one hot summer. Yes, highly productive forms of domestic animals suffer from weather changes , however, native breeds, such as, for example, we have in Kalmykia, the Astrakhan region, and at high temperatures graze, give offspring. «
The studies of Professor Akhmed Abilov from the VIZh named after L. K. Ernst confirm that with long waves of heat in thoroughbred cows with high milk yields, sexual function drops catastrophically. Together with colleagues, the scientist observed the herds in the Moscow region in the summer of 2010 during a thermal anomaly that lasted a month. At that time, the air temperature exceeded the norm by ten, and sometimes twenty degrees.
Wild animals, on the contrary, over millions of years of evolution have adapted to strong temperature fluctuations and developed many rescue mechanisms. «They seek shelter, spend a lot of time in the water, like, for example, ungulates,» says Artem Kidov.
In Australia, hit hard by last year's wildfires, opossums have been observed to be able to hide in deep hollows, and brown marsupial mice go into a torpor to survive starvation in the scorched space. It is estimated that only three percent of animals die in a fire, seven if the fires are very strong.
For whom the summer heat is really dangerous, it is for the populations of newts, frogs, toads and other amphibians that inhabit small temporary reservoirs — oxbow lakes, puddles, streams. If they dry out faster than the larvae and tadpoles undergo metamorphosis, the offspring die. “Several such droughts in a row, and the population does not reproduce,” Kidov notes. In Russia, this happens in the southern regions of the country, Ciscaucasia. Next, the number of those who feed on amphibians is sharply reduced: storks, waterfowl, minks, badgers. Then there is a massive outbreak of activity of pests of farmland and forestry.
«In the long term, global warming will have a powerful effect on the animal world,» the scientist says. However, he warns that the reasons for the mass death of animals in different regions of the world can also be associated with infections that move further north, as well as the use of increasingly dangerous chemicals and zero-till methods — when everything living in the fields and around is poisoned.
Kidov cites the death of cranes last fall in the Stavropol Territory as an example. “The last two years have become the most catastrophic for migratory birds — pigeons, cranes, geese, owls, owls. They sit on the fields, eat rodents, in whose bodies pesticides have accumulated. Then they fly off 30-40 kilometers and die,” says the researcher. 
Human factors
“Unequivocally, no one can say that the mass death of animals or the extinction of species is associated with warming,” says RAS Corresponding Member Alexei Surov, Deputy Director for Science at the Severtsov Institute for Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The most famous example is polar bears, which leave their habitats and go out to people from hunger. But now, according to scientists, there are quite a lot of individuals.
There is no clarity about the death of the Caspian seals this winter. «They assume that the climate is indirectly to blame, due to which the water temperature increased, which provoked the infection,» continues Surov.
He also recalls the mass death of saigas in 2015 in Kazakhstan. During the spring and summer, more than half of the population died out. Among the probable causes are exhaustion due to drought, poisoning with unusual plant foods, and infection. However, there is no clear answer.
Another example is the death of reindeer in the past few years in Yamal. “During the migration, the animals break their limbs when they get on ice, they cannot move, and several thousand die,” explains Maksim Maksimchik from the Tyumen Scientific Center of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The scientists came across these facts while studying the genetics of reindeer to improve selection and breeding work (the program was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science). For a population of 700,000 in the Russian Arctic, this is not critical, but for indigenous peoples who live by reindeer herding, the loss of, for example, a third of the herd is a serious threat. And in recent years, cases have become more frequent. «What is the reason for this is not known for certain. The issue is being investigated,» the specialist adds.
According to Alexei Surov, this happens from time to time — for example, in Mongolia, with a sharp change in temperature in the absence of snow, livestock die en masse. «Whether this is due to climate warming is not clear,» the expert adds.
Warming is slow, over a century and a half, the average annual temperature has risen by half a degree. How successfully animals adapt to this will become clear after tens or even hundreds of years of observation. «So far, it is only known that heat-loving species are expanding their ranges to the north,» the biologist states.
According to scientists, many cases of mass death of animals, as well as the disappearance of individual species, occur with the participation of humans. Still, Homo sapiens is the most numerous species of mammals. It all started 12 thousand years ago with the destruction of megafauna by our ancestors and continues on a large scale throughout the planet. No wonder this process is called the sixth — anthropogenic — extinction of species. /1510976246.html» data->