Climate change and recreation: Why biodiversity matters

Mirjam Barrueto | wolverinewatch.org

A warming world is going to change B.C.’s ecosystems with repercussions for all of us

This article is part of a series of stories exploring the connection between climate change and recreation. Through conversations with scientists, advocates, land managers, recreationalists, and more, we’ll look at how a warming world and more extreme weather is impacting the activities we love. But more than glum news, we’re interested in how the recreation industry is already hard at work preparing for change, reducing the impacts, and actively trying to slow global warming. 

Wolverines could be the token animal for backcountry skiers. They thrive in cold and inhospitable places, gravitate to wild mountains with few humans, and the females, in particular, prefer north-facing terrain during the winter. In January, they make their dens in crevices under fallen trees or rock piles, where they raise their kits under the snow until May.

“Snow is always an important part of the structure,” says Matthew Scafford, a conservation scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada who studies wolverines. “Their lifecycle is synced to the cold.” 

That makes the wolverine particularly at risk from climate change. An unseasonable rain event could soak the kits or an early melt could leave the family exposed. With an already low fertility rate, seemingly small events and changes could have a major impact on the population, Scafford says. 

“Wolverines may be able to deal with some ups and downs, but probably not the extremes,” he says.

There’s not enough data to know what impact climate change is having on wolverine populations in B.C. But biologists have no doubt a warming world is hurting biodiversity in the province, with repercussions for the overall ecosystem and humans, too.

“As B.C.’s climate changes, the wildlife that can survive in our province changes with it,” says Matthew Syvenky, the co-chair of BC Nature’s Climate Committee. “We have a lot to lose when ecosystems become less diverse.”

The plants and animals help create the sense of place that defines the feel and nature of an area, Syvenky says. When the make up of species changes so does the beauty. And healthy and diverse ecosystems perform services that make the planet livable, including mitigating natural disasters and moderating air temperature and water flows. The loss of one species can unbalance the intricate web, he says. 

The species most at risk from climate change are those that have low population numbers, a slow reproduction rate, and live in endangered ecosystems, like old-growth forests and riparian zones. That includes mountain caribou, Pacific salmon and amphibians like the endangered spadefoot toad. But with forecast climate changes many more species are at risk. 

To visualise how much the climate will shift in B.C.’s provincial parks, Colin Mahoney, a research climatologist, compared temperature and precipitation averages in the 1980s to forecasts for 2080. Using analogs for biogeoclimatic zones he could anticipate for any given location in the park system what the ecosystem might look like with future weather predictions. 

Generally, climates will move north and uphill, he says. Most “new” climates exist elsewhere in the same park. But in some places novel climates will appear and others will disappear. The latter is often the case in smaller parks. Nowhere in Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park on Vancouver Island will have the same weather in 2080 as the park experienced in 1980. And Mahoney couldn’t find anywhere in North America with a climate analog for the Great Bear Rainforest’s warmer and wetter future. 

Regardless of how dramatic the shift, because plants can’t migrate, the pace of change will happen too fast for ecosystems to adapt, Mahoney says. And there are places where the change will strand even mobile animals.  

“As the climate shifts uphill it can shift right off the top of mountains, stranding species with nowhere to go,” he says.

BC Parks is using Mahoney’s research to prepare the park system for the future. Managers can visit the climate analogues to see what the challenges might be in the future, how wildlife might adapt, or even how human use could change. 

“It’s probably imperfect,” says Mahoney. “But it’s the closest approximation we have.”

For a species as mysterious as the wolverine that’s important. For instance, as cold, snowy places become rarer, at the same time that backcountry skiing becomes more popular, biologists are starting to wonder how mother wolverines will react to more people in the denning areas, says Scafford. 

“We know they still den when there’s human activity in the area,” he says. “But we don’t know what the tipping point of human activity is when they stop using an area.”

In the future skiers, snowshoers and snowmobilers might be locked out of important denning zones to protect wolverines, just as recreation managers already limit access to key mountain caribou habitat. We’re not there yet, but as the world warms and habitats change, it’s increasingly clear that threats to biodiversity are threats to how we like to play, too.

Ryan Stuart started writing about his adventures as a way to get paid to play. Twenty years later he’s still at it. Look for his name in magazines like Outside, Men’s Journal, Ski Canada, online at Hakai and The Narwhal. When he’s not typing at his home office in Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley, you can find him skiing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, paddling or fishing somewhere nearby.