Global Warming is Most Dangerous Threat to Wildlife
NWF testified to the U.S. Senate on February 7, 2007 that Congress must act to protect America's wildlife from the greatest threat — global warming.
Our message was optimistic — that America can be a global leader in solving global warming and protecting wildlife, if we act with the urgency and determination with which we have successfully confronted past threats to our security and to wildlife.
NWF stated that we must act now to protect wildlife from the dangers of global warming, including:
- rising sea levels,
- drying wetlands,
- changing water temperatures,
- more pests and diseases, and
- shifting vegetation zones
Read the full NWF Testimony before Congress on wildlife and global warming.
Quotes from the Testimony
A study in the journal Nature concluded that, within the next 50 years, as many as a third of wildlife species in some regions worldwide could be headed for extinction because of global warming (Thomas et al., 2004). The threat of global warming to wildlife was vividly illustrated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposal on December 27, 2006, to list the polar bear as a threatened species. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne stated that "the polar bears' habitat may literally be melting." By starting now to cut global warming pollution levels 2 percent annually and setting concrete goals to cut emissions 20 percent every decade, we can reduce our pollution levels a total of 80 percent by mid-century. Every minute, we emit 25 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the United States.
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