U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Releases Climate Change Plan

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Monday released its final strategic plan that will guide the agency’s efforts to respond to the threat posed by global warming.

The plan, titled “Rising to the Urgent Challenge: Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change,” is part of the Department of the Interior’s
coordinated response strategy. It provides a framework within which the Service will work as part of the conservation community to help ensure the sustainability of fish, wildlife, plants and habitats in the face of accelerating climate change.

“The growing impacts from climate change on wildlife, plants, and watersheds call for a coordinated and strategic response from the Department and its bureaus,” says Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for fish and wildlife and parks. “The Service’s plan is both a call to arms and a clear roadmap for action. It is firmly rooted in sound science, an adaptive, landscape-scale conservation approach, and collaboration with partners.”

Service Acting Director Rowan Gould said the strategy has been shaped by more than 18 months of intensive work and input from employees, as well as comments from partners, and the public submitted during a two-month comment period last fall.

The plan, which can be found on the Web at the link below has three key elements:

• Adaptation – helping to reduce the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats
• Mitigation – taking actions to reduce greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere
• Engagement – reaching out to Service employees, local, national and international partners in the public and private sectors, key constituencies and stakeholders and the broader citizenry of this country to join forces and seek solutions to the challenges posed by climate change to fish and wildlife conservation.

The Service’s plan commits the agency to be a leader in addressing the conservation challenges of a changing climate through some significant commitments. An accompanying action plan details specific steps the Service is taking now and during the next five years to implement the plan. These include:

• Targeting conservation by working with partners to develop science-based methods to identify the most vulnerable species.
• Prioritizing existing challenges that will be made more difficult as a result of changing climate, including water scarcity and habitat fragmentation.
• Leading efforts to develop a National Fish and Wildlife Climate Adaptation Strategy to serve as the conservation community’s shared blueprint to guide wildlife adaptation partnerships during the next 50 years.
• Creating a National Biological Inventory and Monitoring Partnership that strategically deploys the conservation community’s monitoring resources. Working with DOI’s Regional Climate Change Response Centers, the Partnership would generate scientific data needed to understand climate change effects on the distribution and abundance of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats; model predicted population and habitat change; and help us determine if we are achieving our goals.
• Helping establish a network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives that develop regional and field technical capacity by working with partners to provide cutting edge science and information. These cooperatives, guided by DOI’s newly created Climate Response Council, will be the primary vehicle through which the Service and partners acquire and apply the best climate change science to inform fish and wildlife management decisions and actions.

“The Service’s climate strategy acknowledges and embraces the agency’s role in providing national leadership on this critical issue facing fish and wildlife agencies, while also acknowledging the critical role of states, tribes, and private organizations in delivering fish and wildlife conservation across the country,” says Dave Schad, Director of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Division of Fish and Wildlife. “It recognizes the importance of collaborative approaches and partnerships in responding to the challenges posed by an uncertain future climate, and reflects an increasingly sophisticated view of how the conservation community must approach adaptation strategies at the policy, science, and program levels.”