Chapter 5 Threats
5.12.3 Temperature Changes – Anticipated Impacts Higher seasonal and overall temperatures can affect the phenology (seasonal timing) of certain activities, such as migration, breeding, or leaf emergence. Since phenology can affect species differently, it can result in a mismatch between an animal and its required food source or other essential need. Some plants are producing flowers earlier due to warmer conditions, while others are blooming later because of insufficient duration of necessary cold conditions. So- called false springs have been shown to damage flowers and thus affect wildlife that rely on the fruit. It is not clear, however, if phenological changes are actually damaging to a given species or an adaptation to changing conditions. Some hunting or fishing harvest seasons have traditionally been timed to coincide with certain life stages of target fish and wildlife. Shifts in phenology can cause a mismatch of the harvest season and the size or condition of the animal (Peer and Miller 2014) . Traditional hunting seasons may have to be adjusted not only to benefit the hunter, but also to avoid impacting the wildlife population. For the most part, this is not an issue for freshwater fishing because there typically are no closed fishing seasons. However, there are seasonal considerations for Striped Bass and some marine species. Sea turtle populations will be affected by erosion of beach-nesting areas; sand temperatures that influence sex determination of hatchlings toward females (no male hatchlings); temperatures that exceed the upper limit for egg incubation (34°C) to occur at all; and loss of sea grass bed and coral reef feeding grounds from warming ocean waters. Growing seasons are becoming longer in the Southeast, nighttime air temperatures are warmer, and precipitation events are becoming more extreme (McNulty et al. 2014; Fischlin et al. 2007) . Ground temperatures that are higher than normal winter seasonal ranges are associated with milder winters and may cause earlier onset of spring conditions. There is evidence that plants that have evolved to emerge annually based on persistent soil temperatures are now blooming as many as 10 days earlier than previously documented. Many wildlife species will be affected by a disconnect between availability of food resources and young produced during the spring. Birds that migrate earlier in response to warming temperatures may experience greater competition for food and cover resources when there are disconnects between occurrence and availability. Climate change-driven warming could expand the northern ranges for many invasive insect species (Vose et al. 2014) . Climate change could also indirectly affect insect populations through impacts on natural enemies, important insect symbionts, host physiology, and host range distributions. Future warmer winter temperatures could remove existing range barriers for some native species. This could result in spread into places where hosts are currently abundant and result in competition between native and nonnative insect species.
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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