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Alex Kollar

25 September 2016

BIOL 314

News Analysis #2

Fate of turtles, tortoises affected more by habitat than temperature.

ScienceDaily.com Article: www.sciencedaily.com

This article reports the research conducted by the University of Bristol and the

University of California to understand the impact of global warming on turtle and tortoise

populations. The article opens with explaining that over 60% of turtle and tortoise species

are listed as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered because they are being

traded, collected for food and medicine and their habitats are being degraded.

Researchers set out to test if global warming poses a critical threat to the

turtle/tortoise populations. They discovered that, according to fossil records, during the

warmer periods of the Late Cretaceous period (66-72 million years ago) turtles and

tortoises were able to stand the heat in the warmer tropics -- as long as there was enough

water to support those species living in rivers and lakes. This revelation means that

although the rising global temperatures are a threat to the global turtle and tortoise

population, it is actually habitat degradation that appears to be a greater risk.

Ecology, atmospheric science, and natural science seem to take center stage in the

researchers examination. They studied fossil records to predict the effects rising global

temperatures would have on the ecology of the current turtle/ tortoise populations. They

found that the warmer temperatures of the past allowed the reptiles to adapt to warmer
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conditions over the span of tens of thousands of years. This discovery holds valuable

insight to the resilience of turtles and tortoises in the future.

After reading this article, it is clear to me that studying the reasons as to why a

species is endangered is a complex process. Although it makes perfect sense, it never

occurred to me that to predict the future of a species, one must refer to the past. It was,

however, a little unexpected to read that so much of the turtle and tortoise population is

still being hunted to the brink of extinction. That may sound ignorant, and probably is,

but at this point in human history I had assumed that animal poaching fell into the same

category as smoking: everyone knows its bad and so it just doesnt make sense that

people still do it. This thinking just reveals that to truly understand environmental issues,

one must step out of his/her own view and examine these topics from different

perspectives.

It may seem like a stretch to tie Christian theology to the wellbeing of the turtle

and tortoise populations, but if we truly believe that God created each creature to have a

balanced and important role within Creation, then this issue should be a conversation

worth having. I would be interested to know the extent as to how habitat degradation

effects the population and what is being done to counter it. This would expose where the

church could help in the fight for species conservation and protection.