How Will Climate Change Affect Mountain Gorillas?

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When you live on the top of a mountain, you don't have many places to run if the environment of that mountain habitat changes. Look at the American pika, for example. These tiny, rabbit-like mammals have evolved to live in cold, high-elevation habitats and die if exposed to temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately climate change is warming their mountain habitats, pushing the pikas into higher and higher elevations where they have less space to live and fewer plants to eat. Eventually, they may run out of room entirely.

Will the same thing happen to the iconic, critically endangered mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) of central Africa? In 2011 research by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization predicted that the vegetation in mountain gorilla habitat will be dramatically altered by climate change. Warming temperatures will push certain plant species further up the mountains leaving the gorillas, which spend most of their days foraging, with fewer food sources. According to some climate change models, the current habitats for mountain gorillas in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo could become completely unsuitable for the massive primates for the year 2090.