Environment Agency: British wildlife faces climate change devastation

The UK is already feeling the effects of global warming, as rising temperatures put native species at risk of extinction
The Environment Agency is warning that species such as dormice are under pressure from warmer weather. Photograph: George McCarthy/CORBIS George McCarthy/© George McCarthy/CORBIS

Rising temperatures and sea levels brought on by climate change could have devastating effects on British wildlife from salmon to wildfowl, the Environment Agency warned today as climate talks entered a second week in Copenhagen.

The agency said the country's waterways could be hit by invading species, such as African clawed toads and South American water primrose, which spread disease to native wildlife and clog up rivers and streams, causing flooding.

Fish species such as Atlantic salmon and trout, which need cold water may struggle to survive, are already declining in warming southern English rivers and estuaries.

Insects, which form an integral part of the food chain, will fall by a fifth for every 1C rise in temperatures in upland streams, the government agency warned.

Rising sea levels could inundate salt marshes and mudflats, which are used by migrating birds such as redshank plovers and wildfowl.

According to the government's conservation agency, Natural England, the UK's wildlife – from oak trees to newts – is already feeling the effects of climate change.

Lord Chris Smith, chairman at the Environment Agency, said: "There is a danger that we think of climate change as something that is happening in other countries. But it's not just polar bears and rainforests that are at risk.

"What we see in our rivers, gardens, seas and skies here in the UK is already changing and delays in reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions will lead to more severe impacts."

The Wildlife Trust is warning that species such as hazel dormice and bluebells are under pressure because of warmer weather, which will affect hibernating animals and bring trees into leaf earlier.

But warmer temperatures could allow the likes of spoonbills, wasp spiders and loose-flowered orchids to become more abundant or colonise for the first time.

European birds and insects which can easily move could be the first to increase their range into this country, while those native species least able to move their ranges further north or higher into the uplands as temperatures rise are most at risk of declines or extinction.

Dr Tom Tew, chief scientist at Natural England, said studies dating over the past 75 years show oak trees are coming into leaf three weeks earlier than they were in the 1950s.

As a result, insects are shifting their emergence patterns to fit in, which deprives birds of food to feed their chicks.

Newts are coming back into ponds in November, instead of March as they were in the 1970s, and swallows in Cornwall "aren't even bothering to migrate" south in winter, he said.

Tew believes the answer, for both wildlife and humans, is to work with the natural environment to help people, plants and animals adapt to the warming climate.

For example, creating salt marshes on the coast protects against flooding more cost effectively than concrete walls, provides carbon storage, nurseries for fish stocks and habitat for wildlife.

And we need to make the landscape more "permeable", allowing wildlife to move further north and higher up as temperatures rise by providing more "stepping stones" such as ponds and hedgerows.

The Environment Agency is working to provide new habitats to replace lost wetlands and improve water quality to give species vulnerable to climate change such as eels the best chance of survival.

Smith said there was also an urgent need for all countries to limit their emissions to avoid the "disastrous consequences" of a world in which temperatures rise by 4C or more.