the nature diaries

Not all are built for change,
Not all can move their range.
Heat favors those who bend,
Leaves others at their end.
The wild is not erased,
It’s quietly replaced.

“Winners and losers” feels like the wrong language for something as complex as climate change, but here in New Jersey, it’s hard not to see that some species are adjusting faster than others. Winters aren’t the same as they used to be. There are stretches of unseasonable warmth, sudden freezes, and snowstorms that melt within days. The seasons feel less predictable and more improvised, but not everything can improvise.

Ticks, for example, are surviving winters that once kept their numbers down. Milder cold seasons allow blacklegged ticks, the ones that carry Lyme disease, to persist longer and expand their range. Fewer sustained freezes mean more survive into spring. This means that the ticks are actually benefiting from a warmer climate. Spotted lanternflies, already invasive, also gain an advantage in milder conditions. Warmer temperatures can lengthen their active season and support population growth. In disturbed suburban and urban landscapes, adaptable insects often thrive.

But not every species is as flexible.

Along the Jersey Shore, rising sea levels and stronger storms are threatening horseshoe crab spawning grounds. These ancient creatures rely on specific tidal conditions to lay their eggs. If beaches erode or flood too frequently, their nesting success drops, directly affecting the food supply for migratory shorebirds like the red knot, who time their migration around those eggs. In the Pine Barrens, shifts in precipitation and temperature affect plant communities that depend on very particular soil and moisture conditions. Some native species are finely tuned to this ecosystem. They can’t just relocate north, and they can’t reproduce quickly enough to keep pace with rapid change.

Generalists, like raccoons, pigeons, and deer, continue to adapt to fragmented forests and suburban neighborhoods. Some southern plant species are creeping northward. However, specialists, species tied to narrow temperature ranges or tightly timed seasonal cues, face a more challenging future.

It’s unsettling to realize that the “winners” of climate change are often the species already comfortable in instability. They’re fast breeders, broad eaters, or heat-tolerant insects. Meanwhile, species that evolved in balance with predictable seasons struggle to keep up. And here in New Jersey, between the shore, the suburbs, and the remaining forests, you can almost see that tilt happening in real time.

Climate change doesn’t erase biodiversity all at once. Adaptation, it turns out, is less about strength, but more about flexibility and in a world that is increasingly less stable, flexibility matters more than anything else.