Birds and Sealife at Risk from European Heatwave
Date: 11-Aug-03
Country: SPAIN
Author: Julia Hayley
Other animals are not so lucky. Eels in the Rhine and chickens in Bosnia and Brittany have succumbed by the thousand.
German cuckoos are migrating earlier and butterflies are breeding three times instead of once.
"Birds are particularly affected because they are small and have a greater surface area to weight and a higher body temperature than humans," said Juan Carlos Atienza, a biologist at the Spanish Ornithological Society.
Birds of prey and storks, which tend to build nests in exposed places, are particularly at risk because chicks are likely to be in the direct sun and adult birds cannot always bring them enough water.
"If it's very hot birds don't fly around during the day which cuts down their feeding time."
"Intense heat early in the summer dries up the plants earlier and there are fewer insects," he added.
Some birds and insects in Germany appear to be relishing the extra sun.
Johanna Theunissen from the German Wildlife Protection Association said the heat was enabling swifts, cuckoos and nightingales to breed earlier than in previous years.
"Because of the high temperatures, swifts were able to breed and migrate south 10 days earlier than last year," she said.
Certain breeds of butterflies usually found in southern Europe are thriving in Germany, she said.
"Some butterflies that normally only reproduce once during the summer have produced three generations this year."
Poultry and fish farmers from Brittany to Bosnia are facing heavy casualties.
A farmers group reported at least 25,000 chickens had died from heat in Ille-et-Vilaine alone in Brittany last week and in northern Bosnia farmer Djuro Cvijic said that 1,600 chicks, out of 16,000 he keeps at two farms, had died in a single day.
"I've just turned vents upside down so that the air goes inside," Cvijic was quoted as saying in the Dnevni Avaz daily. He has also begun to pour water on the roofs to save chicks.
LOW WATER IN RIVERS AND LAKES
Officials of the Sanicani fish-pond in northern Bosnia, the biggest in the region, said they feared for life in the lakes where water levels have been halved and oxygen content has fallen below permissible limits. A fishing association says it will seek a ban on fishing because fish roe has been dying.
Authorities reported some 30,000 eels had died because of the heat in the Rhine and in Romania the Danube fell to its lowest level in more than a century, with many of the canals in the delta drying out and fires breaking out in reed beds.
The surface water temperature in the Mediterranean has risen to 31 Celsius (88 F).
"The sea temperature between Castellon (south of Barcelona) and the Balearic Islands is 31 degrees...In my experience I've never seen temperatures that high," said Jose Antonio Fernandez at the Spanish Meteorological Institute.
Marine biologists at the Institute of Sea Sciences in Barcelona say a temporary change of a few degrees should not unduly affect sea life.
"Wild fish can usually adapt. They just swim lower and the algae that swim can do the same," said Marta Estrada. "An increase in the surface temperature does not reach as far as 10 meters down. It can affect the circulation of the water and cause it to form layers but the impact is small."
"But it's another matter if these changes go on year after year."
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Senior Scientist Lara Hansen said anemones and starfish were likely to feel the heat most because they could not move to deeper waters.
"As the water becomes warmer their metabolism will speed up and they require more food, which may not be available... plankton, which are the building block of the ocean, could face substantial challenges," she added.
Maximum temperatures in parts of southern Spain have reached 45 Celsius (113 F) in recent weeks. That often happens for a few days in summer, but not for a sustained period.
If ponds and rivers dry up, the creatures that live there can be lost for that seas
