It’s getting warmer and warmer earlier and earlier. February brings record temperatures. The fact that plants are already blooming and birds are chirping may give many people a feeling of spring. But that’s not a good sign for nature. This way you can help as best you can.
While many of us humans are happy about the mild temperatures in February, they really mess up nature. “It may be that hibernating animals wake up,” explains Christina Skupien from the Animal Welfare Association for Tyrol. “We notice it extremely with the hedgehogs, they are already roaming through the gardens.”Small animals in the garden need helpInstinctively, animals wake up from their hibernation when the days become longer, the food supply becomes more plentiful and the temperatures become milder. But now it is already warm and the animals, whose reserves have already been used up, have nothing to eat yet. “It’s important that you feed them,” explains Skupien. She recommends cat food for hedgehogs in the garden, and birds also need the birdhouse. According to Skupien, the birdbirds have another problem: “Birds breed immediately when it gets warm. If there is another onset of winter, the brood dies off.” For species that only breed once, this means no offspring this year. It is also fatal for hedgehogs if it gets cold a second time when they are already awake are. Because simply going to sleep again is not an option for them: “That costs a lot of energy, they can’t do it several times.” The current temperatures in the double-digit plus range are exceptionally warm for February. According to the weather service UBIMET, the first half of February in Austria this year was almost 7 degrees warmer than the long-term average from 1991 to 2020. “On the one hand, the general weather situation is responsible for this, but on the other hand, global warming also plays a significant role, as the water temperatures in the North Atlantic continue to be record warm “It’s the season,” explains meteorologist Nikolas Zimmermann. Plants lose their valuable protection against the cold. A sudden onset of winter also shakes things up in the plant world, for example in fruit trees. Klemens Böck is a consultant for fruit growing at the Tyrol Chamber of Agriculture and knows about the problems: “The plants are protected by ‘winter hardiness’. When it gets warmer, this is lost in order to prepare for growth. If it gets cold again afterwards, the flower no longer has any protection. For fruit growers in particular, this means trembling. You can help yourself with frost protection irrigation to protect the flowers with a layer of ice. This is too time-consuming for private garden owners. Böck advises covering apricot trees or other plants on house walls with fleece. “And what happens when you replant: choose varieties that bloom later.” We don’t have much more left.
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