Giles Whittell

in Los Angeles

reports on the

wildlife toll ¹⁾

of El Niñ o ²⁾

BABY seals and sea lions, deprived of food by the oceanic warming of El Niñ o, the weather phenomenon, are dying by the thousand on the islands off southern California.

More than 6, 000 pups have starved to death this breeding season on one tiny island alone. There, and along the Californian coast, the death rate is expected to rise as adult females of both species are forced to roam long distances for cold water and food, returning unable to support their young.

News of the losses came as Los Angeles began cleaning up after the year’s first big El Niñ o storm drenched the city with up to seven inches of rain over the weekend. The storm flooded mobile home parks and the artists’ enclave of Laguna Beach, Orange County, and brought traffic chaos to a place unused to rain. Wildlife, however, has so far borne the brunt of El Niñ o.

The worst-hit marine mammal colonies are on the beaches of the Channel Islands National Park, a unique archipelago 50 miles west of Los Angeles that is home to the largest populations of California sea lions and northern fur seals outside

Alaska. Scientists are maintaining a watching brief, forbidden by law from intervening in what so far appears to be a process of natural selection. Rescue efforts are under way by conservation groups on the mainland, however, where many consider the current severe El Niñ o pattern to be caused at least partly by man-made global warming.

Perched on the edge of the continental shelf, the Channel Islands usually give seals and sea lions easy access to shoals of herring, sardine and anchovy in cold ocean waters to the north and west.

In normal years a massive “cold water upwelling” also nourishes a kelp forest and vast blooms of krill, which in turn support migrating blue whales.

The periodic warming of the Eastern Pacific, known as El Niñ o, has already brought freak numbers of tropical fish to US waters. The phenomenon has now been even more graphically illustrated by the emaciated sea lion pups sucking in vain on their mothers’ teats and lying down to die.

Of the 23, 000 sea lions born this summer, 4, 500 have so far died of malnutrition, according to Bob DeLong of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Their death rate is expected to rise fourfold to match the 75 per cent death rate among baby seals: 1, 500 of the 2, 000 northern fur seals born on San Miguel Island since June have died.

International conservation treaties have helped both species to thrive along America’s West Coast since the 1950s, but experts fear that this year’s El Niñ o, the worst on record, could wipe out an entire generation of adult females.

“They’ve used up all their blubber on lactation, ” Mr DeLong told yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. “They’ve got no reserve energy and they’re just going to go back in that same damned ocean. They’re going to need to find cold water, and I think that’s going to be hard.”

Manila: The International Committee of the Red Cross is making available between $5.6 million (£ 3.3 million) and $7.01 million to help countries, including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, hit by El Niñ o. (AFP)

¨ Explanatory Notes

¹⁾ Toll – used mainly in newspaper headline language to denote the total number of people who have been killed. Here: of wildlife.

²⁾ El Niñ o – is a warm ocean current of variable intensity that develops after late December along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and sometimes causes catostrophic weather conditions, e.g. flood, droughts, warming and other weather disturbances in many regions of the world. El Niñ o is Spanish for “the boy” and refers to the Christ child, because periodic warming in the Pacific near South America is usually noticed around Christmas.