Over 260 Global Scientists Unite on Urgent Call for Wildlife Protection for Sake of Climate

For the first time, leading scientists worldwide have united to affirm the vital role that wild animals play in climate mitigation and ecosystem resilience.

The 288 experts from six continents and a full range of climates and ecosystems have endorsed the Scientific Consensus on Wildlife and Climate, collectively calling on governments to explicitly incorporate wildlife and their ecological roles into climate policies and frameworks.

The consensus was announced June 11 at the SB64 — the 64th sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Subsidiary Bodies in Bonn, Germany, as protecting wildlife becomes more broadly recognized as a cost-effective, nature-based solution to climate change.

“The science is becoming increasingly clear that wildlife contributes to ecosystem functioning in ways that are directly relevant to climate science,” said Trisha Atwood, a Utah State University ecologist among the academics who helped develop the consensus document. “This is not about replacing emissions reductions or existing climate strategies — it is about ensuring climate policy reflects the full complexity of how ecosystems actually work.”

Experts in animal welfare, conservation and climate science have long called for global recognition of the contributions wild animals make to climate change mitigation and adaptation, but this is the first time scientists from multiple disciplines have agreed on language underpinning this body of research.

When living in their natural environments, animals can play a vital role as “climate allies,” as their natural behaviors keep whole ecosystems functioning, including contributing to natural carbon storage and sequestration. For example, fish in the open ocean transport carbon to the deep sea, forest elephants spread the seeds of carbon-dense trees, and grazing bison encourage plant growth and nutrient recycling.

“Wildlife is more than a victim of climate change,” Atwood said. “Animals help regulate food webs, move nutrients, shape habitats, and support ecosystem productivity and recovery. Those ecological processes are increasingly recognized as important components of the climate system.”

A 2023 Nature Climate Change paper led by Yale University estimated that restoring wild animal populations and their functional roles could increase carbon dioxide uptake by an additional 6.41 gigatons per year. This would help address the shortfall between what conventional nature-based solutions can deliver and what scientists say is needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Yet to date, the need to protect wild animals and their habitats has been largely absent from climate policy. Atwood noted that animals play active and often overlooked roles in shaping environmental processes tied to climate outcomes.

She added that the implications for policy are becoming harder to ignore because the question is no longer whether wildlife affects ecosystem functioning; it is whether we can afford to ignore those effects when they influence how carbon moves through and is stored across the planet.

While their role in climate action has been recognized in some processes, including under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals and by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, scientists say meaningful progress requires recognition within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Scientific Consensus on Wildlife and Climate was developed through a structured, transparent drafting process, with input from a global group of academics. The collective agreed, in essence, that:

• Animals can positively influence climate-related ecological processes through their natural behavior, such as grazing, predation, movement, feeding and excretion.
• These processes play an important role in carbon storage and ecosystem regeneration and stability yet are largely overlooked in climate planning and policy.
• In many cases, it is scientifically incomplete to assess nature-based climate solutions without considering how wild animals help ecosystems function.

The consensus is a united call for governments to explicitly account for wild animals and their functional roles in climate policies and frameworks, to strengthen holistic climate and biodiversity action. It provides policymakers with a credible reference that helps ensure wildlife and their functional roles are properly considered in climate and nature assessments, modelling, planning and delivery.