Wildlife Corridors Help Animals Flee From Climate Change

To help animals survive climate change, setting aside nature reserves isn't enough: to flee habitats made inhospitable by shifting climes, they also need "corridors" between wilderness areas.

Groups around the world are working to establish these wildlife highways, with varying degrees of success. In North America, the Wildlands Project is pushing for a huge "Yellowstone-to-Yukon" wildlife corridor. In Central America, conservationists are slowly and sporadically working on the Meso-American Biological Corridor. The dream: A monkey should be able to go up a tree in Panama and not have to climb down until it reaches Mexico. The grand vision of the IUCN is an uninterrupted connection between Argentina and Alaska along the hemisphere's western mountain ranges.

The corridor idea is relatively new: conservationists once thought that preserves were enough. But groups of animals isolated from their species become genetically homogeneous, and don't develop the diversity necessary to adapt to threats -- especially that of climate change.

Corridors, say scientists, allow genes to mix -- and beyond being a good idea environmentally, these sound like fun for people. Monkeys aren't the only creatures that might like to follow the trees from
Panama to Mexico.

One way to help species facing habitat loss: 'escape routes' [Christian Science Monitor]

Problem facing species displaced by warming: nowhere to run [Christian Science Monitor]