Climate Change - Page 5

Since 2005, the population of Giant Petrels has halved from over 5,800 nesting birds to around 2,600 in the South Orkney Islands.

This bird is an endangered species in Norway, with numbers plummeting from around 160,000 pairs in the 1960s to just 15,000 breeding pairs today.

Federal scientists estimate that the Arctic region contains up to 15 billion barrels of oil. Burning this, however, could release an additional 15.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – the equivalent to all US transportation emissions over a nine year period.

A new multinational study, the first global review of Arctic marine mammals, has assessed the status of all circumpolar species and subpopulations, and highlights the precarious state these animals are in.

Rising temperatures, combined with past hunting on the Tibetan Plateau of central Asia, is forcing female wild yaks onto steeper and steeper terrain.

Species can respond to increasing temperatures by moving upslope to higher elevations, however in many locations the mountains are just not high enough to provide a safe refuge.

Chimpanzees are under threat from many human activities there are only around 6,000 individuals of the Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzee subspecies are left in the wild.

Their extremely low numbers mean that they are suffering from low genetic diversity, their habitat is being fragmented, trapping still occurs and human disturbance from snowmobiling and backcountry skiing disrupts denning wolverines.

Extreme weather, predation and human disturbance are all threats to sea birds up and down the UK coastline.