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There is more grim news from the Himalayas. As the range warms, cold-adapted species like musk deer, pheasants and snow trout are being forced to migrate upslope into smaller and more fragmented refugia. Some Himalayan species may be lost due to this ‘altitude squeeze’, a new report by the United Nations has warned.
The assessment was released by the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) on October 2, 2025. It encapsulated the findings of a major workshop, which detail how climate change disruption is affecting migratory species across the board.
“Held 11-13 February 2025 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, the Migratory Species & Climate Change Expert Workshop gathered 73 leading international experts, including scientists, wildlife managers, representatives of intergovernmental agencies, and NGOs from around the world,” a statement by CMS noted.
S Sathyakumar, professor at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, gave a presentation titled Climate Change and Wildlife Movements in the Himalaya at the workshop.
Climate change is rapidly altering the Himalayan region’s snow-clad mountains, ice peaks, and high-intensity drainage systems, threatening species adapted to cold environments. Rising temperatures are leading to shifting species’ distributions and affecting fundamental niches, the presentation pointed out.
Sathyakumar highlighted the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem, a key mission of the Centre.
As part of it, long-term wildlife monitoring was initiated in 2015 across four major river basins stretching from the Western Himalayas to the eastern parts of the range. These were the Beas (Himachal Pradesh), Bhagirathi (Uttarakhand), Teesta (Sikkim), and Kameng (Arunachal Pradesh). The aim of the project was to document long-term trends in species distribution and the impact of climate change.
Climate change impacts were studied with regard to 36 species of mammals, 27 species of birds, and 2 fish species under different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).
The 36 mammal species included Barking deer, Leopard, wild boar, Himalayan goral, red fox, Indian crested porcupine, sambar, rhesus macaque, Hanuman langur, tiger, golden jackal, yellow throated marten, Asiatic black bear, palm civet, leopard cat, Indian hare, blue sheep, snow leopard, stone marten, Himalayan tahr, Chital, Royles pika, Himalayan serow, jungle cat, musk deer, Tibetan wolf, Tibetan woolly hare, Elephant, Northern palm squirrel, Himalayan brown bear, Siberian weasel, Masked palm civet, Himalayan marmot, common grey mongoose, red giant flying squirrel and Eurasian lynx.
The findings are grim. Small mammals in Uttarakhand showed the highest range loss (>50 per cent) under both full and non-dispersal scenarios.
“In the case of large mammals, altitudinal shifts to higher elevations are predicted. Availability of habitats would be squeezed for musk deer at high altitude. For most of the species, climate refugia were concentrated above 1,500 metres. Pheasants exhibit high diversity in mid-elevations, with the Eastern Himalaya showing high weighted endemism, however future scenarios predict habitat fragmentation,” according to the Report of the Migratory Species and Climate Change Expert Workshop.
Even more worryingly, the migratory snow trout, currently widespread in mid-elevation rivers, is predicted to lose a significant portion of its range, shifting to higher-altitude streams, creating a high-altitude squeeze.
“We predict that high-altitude protected areas (PAs) may buffer climate impacts, but many areas outside protected areas also serve as climate refugia,” it added.
It is likely that some species will be lost because there is no suitable habitat higher up to move into, according to the analysis.
Conservation efforts must secure movement corridors, habitat islands, and refugia to mitigate biodiversity reorganisation under climate change, it recommended.