Elsewhere, climate change - induced drought
shrinks bird habitats in Turkey, while worldwide manmade noise makes it increasingly difficult for birds to communicate, creating another means of avian population decrease.
But on a planet with a warming climate, these same adaptations could spell the
bird's doom: The ptarmigan's range is severely limited by its sole dependence on alpine
habitat, which is
shrinking as hotter temperatures sneak up the mountainsides, threatening to push the treeline — and the ptarmigan — to ever - higher elevations, until there's no more room to rise.