As climate change warps the preferred habitats of mammals, birds and amphibians, these animals will be forced to flee. A beautiful but troubling new map predicts what this massive migration might look like for North and South America.
Ecologist Dan Majka and other researchers from the Nature Conservancy and the University of Washington plotted the likely routes of 2,954 species as they travel from their current habitats to areas that will better suit their needs. Majka's resulting interactive map, called Migrations in Motion, takes into account for lakes or cities and other human developments that animals will have to navigate around.
It's not certain, though, when various animals will undertake the voyages Majka and his colleagues predict. “I don't know if in our lifetimes we'll see these migrations that are extreme and obvious,” he told Wired.
[Wired]
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