Hurricane season is just beginning and we’ve already seen how devastating and damaging hurricanes can be. Reports from the Bahamas are emotional and heartbreaking. Some have lost their lives and others have lost everything that makes up their life – homes, belongings, neighborhoods and communities.
The natural environment took a severe beating as well and it will be some time before the islands recover. But there is an aspect to hurricane damage that is not often discussed, and that is its impact on wildlife.
Wildlife and their homes are hurt by seawater surge, flooding, winds, and the mess left by a hurricane much as people are.
In some instances, wildlife is at more risk than humans because human development and pollution and attempts to mitigate the impact of storms via levees, leave wildlife habitats more susceptible to storm impacts.
Why does it matter and what can be done? It matters because the preservation of wildlife matters for the preservation of human life. The ecosystem is an intricate web of dependencies. Removal of any one species can have as yet unknown effects throughout the ecosystem. Yet efforts to protect wildlife can be completely undone by a devastating storm that destroys entire habitat and food sources.
For example, Hurricane Maria in 2017 nearly eliminated a rare Puerto Rican parrot, when the storm took down all the trees the parrots need for habitat and food. Luckily, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had established self-sustaining wild populations in two separate locations after Hurricane Hugo so although 90 percent of the population was lost from one location, only 35 percent was lost in the other location and the species survived.
Migrating birds face a unique consequence from hurricanes. Birds that migrate through “hurricane alley,” an area of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean, can be blown off course by strong winds and rain and can even die from exhaustion. When storms hit back to back, the effect on migratory birds is cumulative, so even if each individual storms isn’t extreme, in combination they can have the same impact as one severe storm.
It’s not any safer for animals that live on the ground. They may face storm surges that can drown them, and the loss of freshwater can mean that animals can’t find water to drink. Even those animals that typically live in close proximity to water and are able to swim, may not be able to handle the heavy rains that come with a hurricane.
And then, of course, there is everything else that comes with the storm waters. Animals, including snakes and alligators, float in seeking drier land and venomous insects and invasive species can arrive and overtake native plants and animals.
The freshwater rain that falls during a storm can change the salinity of local bodies of water. This allows species to spread into new habitats which can have broad negative consequences on surrounding areas. Wetlands are at risk because the non-native marine life behaves differently in ways that may not be compatible with the needs of the local geography.
Freshwater rain can also jeopardize native plants and animals that cannot tolerate the change in their habitat’s salinity.
The rain, once it is on the ground, doesn’t stay in one spot. The water flows, and as it travels it picks up pollutants and pathogens spreading both far and wide. Not only are people threatened by waterborne disease after storms but so are wildlife and marine life. Pollutants carried by stormwater can also change the chemistry of a body of water so that it can no longer support life.
Much as there are steps we can take to protect people from the severity of a hurricane, there are also things we can do to protect wildlife. Preserving natural hurricane buffers such as coral reefs, barrier islands and coastal wetlands is a commonsense step that benefits both people and wildlife.
These natural barriers lessen the power of the surging seas and absorb the additional water, keeping it away from human and animal habitats. They also help coastal systems recover after a storm. Focus on improving coastal resilience can go a long way to address the more intense and frequent storms which are brought on by climate change and which are now becoming the norm.
