The Climate Emergency has an impact on all of us, often in ways we don’t necessarily recognize. Alina Fisher, communications expert for the UWSS (UVic PhD student), is a signatory on the open letter in the journal BioScience, signed by 11,258 scientists from 153 countries, declaring “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency”.
In a recent Globe and Mail Article https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-thousands-of-scientists-sign-open-letter-declaring-earth-is-facing-a/, Alina states “People do understand [climate change], but they don’t see how it affects them. It’s important for us as scientists to bridge that gap.”
We know that the climate emergency is necessitating change everywhere, including our local communities. For instance, while people are looking for deer resistant plants for their gardens, what is often actually occurring is that past staples of the garden are being replaced with drought resistant plants – often with a return to native plants.
Although the indigenous Black-tailed deer have always been here, we don’t know exactly why their numbers have increased. There is a common belief that loss of their natural habitat is one of the most likely culprits, but we can also infer that Climate Change has had an impact too, with one outcome being a longer fawning season.
These are questions that our own scientists and others seek the answers to, and we hope that the Oak Bay Urban Deer Research Project might help us answer some questions, and see how the Climate Emergency affects not just us, but the wildlife that we are learning to once again co-exist with. We’re grateful to Alina for helping to bridge the gap between understanding climate change and recognizing the impact in our communities.