Responding to Climate Change

Caribou Crossing River Defenders of Wildlife is at the forefront of helping to conserve wildlife in the face of climate change. We are helping to bring the best science to tackle the problem, incorporating climate change into wildlife and habitat conservation planning, understanding specific threats through vulnerability assessments and making management recommendations. We also recognize the need to slow down, or mitigate, climate change through actions to cut emissions.

Science

Planning

Vulnerability Assessments

Adapting to Climate Change

Legislative Efforts

One of the best ways to stop climate change is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) we emit. Increases in CO2 traps more heat on our planet. There are many little ways we can use less energy and be more energy efficient in our everyday lives, from using more efficient appliances or driving less. Efforts to stop climate change on the national scale are necessary as well, in the form of comprehensive climate legislation. To find out more about what you can do to help stop climate change, go to Climate Change 101.

Multimedia:

Federal Land Management and Climate Change, Daniel Ashe

Breathtaking Challenges, David Hayes

California as a Microcosm for Climate Change Response, Michael Mantell

Science

Good science lies at the heart of understanding how climate change will impact species and ecosystems, and how best to respond.

The amount of uncertainty about how plants and animals will respond to a warming world is one of the biggest challenges in conservation. The U.S. Geological Survey’s National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) was championed by Defenders and formed by Congress in 2008 to meet this challenge by providing natural resource managers with the information on how to respond to climate change.

Planning

Wildlife managers need to incorporate climate change into their plans.

Defenders of Wildlife supports efforts by wildlife and natural resource managers to incorporate climate change into their conservation plans. Climate change strategies should be based on assessments of the specific threats that wildlife and ecosystems are expected to face—such as sea level rise, higher temperatures, more frequent storms and droughts—and should include monitoring to provide ongoing information about impacts on the ground. These strategies should also provide for broad landscape-scale coordination to deal with the large and complex conservation issues associated with shifting species ranges due to climate change.

Read the Defenders Report:

Climate Change and Federal Land Management: A Comparison of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Strategies

Multimedia:

Strategy Amid Uncertainty: Learning to think Like A Planet, Dr. Bryan Norton

Find out what federal agencies are doing to include climate change adaptation in their strategic plans. >>

Vulnerability Assessments

Vulnerability assessments provide the scientific basis for developing adaptation strategies.

Vulnerability assessments combine ecological information about the sensitivity of a species or ecosystem (such as a species’ ability to migrate, how broad or narrow its habitat requirements are) with specific details about predicted exposure, based on climate change projections (e.g., how much temperature and precipitation will change), and information about how likely it is that the species or system can adapt to these changes. The relative vulnerability of a species or habitat can then be used to set goals, determine management priorities and inform design of appropriate adaptation strategies. Vulnerability assessments not only analyze the factors leading to vulnerability but also identify various ways to reduce that vulnerability.

Wildlife Vulnerability to Climate Change

Wildlife Climate Change Adaptation Across the Landscape: A Survey of Federal and State Agencies, Conservation Organizations and Academic Institutions

Adapting to Climate Change

Defenders of Wildlife recognizes that while we need to act to stop global warming, we also need to help animals adapt to the effects of global warming.

Adaptation strategies include:

Protecting natural spaces.
Managing the broader landscape.
Promoting travel and migration corridors.
Restoring and enhancing the resilience of damaged natural systems.
Reducing the stress from ongoing threats.
Practicing active adaptive management.

Learn more about each of these strategies.

Protecting natural spaces. Protecting natural spaces is a long-held, critical conservation toolparticularly because of wildlife threats like habitat destruction. However, protecting individual islands of habitat is not sufficient in an era when future conditions are different from conditions we see today. We will have to employ many strategies in order to maintain healthy wildlife populations in the face of climate change.

Managing the broader landscape. When considering shifting wildlife habitats in a warming world, we need to look at entire landscapes, at lands that might have habitat value even though they aren’t specifically protected for wildlife, such as forests, range and pasture land and even croplands. Implementing management strategies that increase these lands’ ability to be used by wildlife – like policies that encourage coexistence and reduce wildlife conflicts – may make the difference for species on the move.

Promoting travel and migration corridors. Helping wildlife to successfully navigate obstacles to migration, like roads, is another key to protecting wildlife in a climate changed world.. Effective design, placement and construction of wildlife corridors will help wildlife species on the move.

Restoring damage and enhance the resilience of natural systems. Restoration of wetlands and terrestrial habitats and improving the quality of existing habitats are key tools for preparing natural systems for climate change. These activities can help to buffer systems from change—for instance, restoring streambank habitat may help keep stream waters cooler for salmon—or help the ecosystem transition to a different, but still vital role – for example, coastal marshes will have a hard time shifting with rising sea levels if there are houses in the way.

Reducing the stress from ongoing threats. Climate change isn’t happening in a vacuum; a whole host of long-term threats to wildlife – habitat destruction, pollution, disease, invasive species, over-exploitation— are still present, and in some cases, such as with pests, diseases and fire, are made worse by climate change.

Practicing active adaptive management. Adaptive management, the practice of changing management strategies in response to outcomes, is more important than ever in a world facing a changing climate. However, it is no longer enough to take a passive approachAnd with the rate of change anticipated, there is no longer time to wait until the uncertainties are worked out—because new uncertainties are emerging. We need to embrace a new model of Active Adaptive Management involving several steps:

1. Explore alternatives

2. Implement one or more alternatives

3. Monitor the outcomes

4. Proceed based on what you learned

Multimedia:

Managing for Change: Climate Change and the National Wildlife Refuge System, Dr. J. Michael Scott.

Adapting Conservation to Climate Change: Rethinking the Dominant Paradigm, Dr. Lara Hansen

Legislative Efforts

Defenders of Wildlife supports a two part national policy response to combating global warming and its impacts:

First, Congress must enact legislation that takes immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to address the root cause of climate change.
Second, this legislation must also include the policy direction and long-term dedicated funding necessary to safeguard wildlife and ecosystems from global warming’s impacts.

Learn more about Defenders' legislative priorities. >>

Jeff Corwin’s Testimony on Climate Change

Featured Publications

Symposium Report: Reducing the Impact of Global Warming on Wildlife: The Science, Management and Policy Challenges Ahead.

Summarizes a September 2007 Symposium on Climate Change and Wildlife hosted by Defenders of Wildlife.

Beyond Cutting Emissions: Protecting Wildlife and Ecosystems in a Warming World

Author: Robert L. Peters, Ph.D.
Published: November 2008

Over 200 scientists, including E.O. Wilson and Tom Lovejoy, sent a letter to President Obama urging him to work with Congress to take swift action on the recommendations in Beyond Cutting Emissions. Read their letter.

Defenders reports on the urgent need to make wildlife and natural resources more resilient to global warming and provides a roadmap for how the Obama Administration can work with Congress to help America’s wildlife and ecosystems survive.

Climate Change Across the Landscape

Animals and habitats are going to need to adapt to the impacts of climate change, so we're leading the efforts to assist them.

Our survey report, Climate Change Adaptation Across the Landscape, combines the best thinking and practices of federal and state agencies, the academic community and conservation organizations on how to help wildlife and landscapes adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The report:

defines climate change adaptation
describes adaptation planning efforts
highlights on-the-ground adaptation strategies currently in use
characterizes the challenges land managers and conservationists face in dealing with climate change
provides estimates of some of the costs of implementing adaptation practices.