Climate Change Threatens an Iconic Desert Tree
It’s not just the polar bear. Animals and plants in Earth’s other extreme environment—the desert—are endangered by rising temperatures.
Close your eyes and imagine a species living in a harsh environment threatened by climate change. If you conjured up a polar bear, Cameron Barrows has a suggestion: Consider, instead, the Joshua tree—the gnarly icon of the Southwest’s Mojave Desert that looks like it sprang from a Dr. Seuss book.
“Animals living in the Arctic get a lot more attention than plants in arid lands, but desert plants like the Joshua tree are also threatened by a changing climate,” says Barrows, a research ecologist at the University of California, Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology.
An environmental group recently petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the Joshua tree, which can grow up to 40 feet tall and lives an average
