In 2023, two Arizona rattlesnakes died while underground, cooked to death in their burrows. These are creatures evolutionarily suited to survive extreme heat.
Mike Cardwell, a rattlesnake researcher who spoke with AZCentral about Arizona’s recent extreme heat that’s killing off animals that should be able to survive it, had never seen snakes die underground due to the heat. But after weeks of 110°F+ days, the burrows that should offer refuge from the heat became little ovens that cook them alive.
It’s a trend that is happening across the Arizona desert. Species that are built to survive being baked and broiled are being cooked by climate change, which is worsening faster than their evolutionary traits can keep up with.
Thanks to climate change, heatwaves are lasting longer. Also, wildfires are more unpredictable, and rainfall is all but nonexistent in some parts of the desert. Animals like the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel are running out of forest to call home.
One wildfire in 2017 nearly wiped out the entire species.
Arizona’s Brutal Heat Is So Bad, Even the Desert Can’t Handle It
Other species, such as the ocelot, are migrating north in a desperate search for water and cooler temperatures. It’s a treacherous journey, because along the way they have to dodge highways and scale various fences and border walls.
The Sonoran pronghorn, a magical-looking deer-like animal endemic to Arizona, has become reliant on the man-made water stations that Arizona officials now refill year-round because actual natural water sources are in short supply. It’s not just them. Mule deer, white tailed deer, bighorn sheep, and elk all have to do the same.
It’s so hot that even the famous cacti of the Sonoran Desert, such as the saguaro cactus —the Trident-like one you’ve seen in countless cartoons and cowboy movies —are struggling in the heat. They photosynthesize at night, when it gets a little cooler. But climate change
Has extended the times in which it is hot as hell not only further into the calendar year but further into the night. The saguaro cactus is struggling to photosynthesize when it’s still over 100 degrees, even after the sun has set.
Another huge indicator that things have become unsustainably hot, according to AZCentral, is that death rates at the Desert Botanical Garden have spiked. Even under the watchful eye of caretakers and botanists, plants that are, again, evolutionarily prepared to survive in the heat can no longer do that.
If they can’t, what hope is there for plants out in the wild? What hope is there for the coyotes and butterflies and jaguars that don’t have zookeepers offering them shade and hydration?
AZCentral says that conservationists are trying to keep up, but it’s a nearly insurmountable hurdle. The effects of climate change are hitting us harder than ever before, and we’re all flailing impotently as we struggle to keep up—if we even are keeping up anymore. We might be lagging so far behind that we’ll get left behind.
You can cast aside concerns about the destruction of ecosystems and the ruination of the delicate balance of nature, as well as the domino effect that the loss of one creature has on an entire ecosystem.
Still, you have to wonder, if these creatures built to survive this can no longer survive, what’s going to happen to us?
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