Climate change and globalisation = radical nature/wildlife change too
From Mother Jones:
Many successful biological invasions capitalize on mayhem. Both melaleuca and lionfish are what biologists call drivers of ecosystem changes—causing, for instance, changes in biodiversity. But both are also passengers of ecosystem changes, piggybacking on changes already under way: melaleuca on disrupted landscapes, lionfish on overfished reefs. The potential for more powerful hurricanes as a result of global climate change threatens to amplify existing invasions and maybe even foster new ones—a process known as invasional meltdown. Fifty miles to the west of Hixon’s lab, in the waters of the North Pacific, a synergy of ecological changes appears to be fueling the invasion of Humboldt squid—aggressive predators reaching nearly seven feet in length (not counting their tentacles) and 110 pounds in weight, and living in schools hundreds or thousands strong. They are known to ecologists as r-strategists: species that live fast, die young, and breed early and profusely. (Humboldt squid produce up to 32 million eggs per female.) R-strategists, like locusts and rats, thrive in unstable environments since their generational turnaround time is short enough for adaptation and evolution to work their miracles.
At the moment, a seriously unstable world beckons the Humboldt squid. Typically confined to the tropics and subtropics, they’re now moving northward explosively as waters warm, as their main predators, tuna and billfish such as marlin, are overfished, and as global-warming-induced dead zones appear—Humboldt squid are one of the few animals tolerant of their low oxygen levels. Although the squid have not been accidentally released from a home aquarium or carried across the Panama Canal in the ballast water of a ship or towed around on portable oil drilling platforms (as with Australian spotted jellyfish in the Gulf of Mexico), they are nevertheless invading new realms and are now established as far north as the once-chilly Gulf of Alaska.
Everything is changing, all at the same time.
It’s clear now that the world of our grandchildren will be something unrecognizable to our grandparents.
Every generation lives in the world it was born into, and changes it by living. That, at least, is nothing new. Nor is it new that we fear changes we don’t control, or that don’t benefit us. Mother Jones is very afraid.
My great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War here in the US. I doubt he’d recognize my world.
Our Grandchildren, themselves, may be unrecognizable to their great-great grandparents. In the sense that in a few generations some of our kin may not even look human. I find that sort of exciting… but I’m a goof who’d like to have a really odd body.