National Fish, Wildlife & Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy
Please visit the website for The National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, learn about this project, read the Public Review Draft and weigh in with your comments. The following is a very brief excerpt:
From the Arctic to the Everglades, impacts like rising sea levels, warmer temperatures, loss of sea ice, and changing precipitation patterns are affecting the species we care about, the services we value, and the places we call home.
In addition to ensuring the sustainability of these resources, along with their many ecological, economic, and recreational benefits, we have an obligation to safeguard our nation’s natural heritage in a changing world.
In an unprecedented collaborative effort, federal, state, and tribal partners with input from many other diverse groups from across the nation are working together to develop a common strategy to respond to these challenges. The National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy will provide a unified approach—reflecting shared principles and science-based practices—for reducing the negative impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, plants, and the natural systems upon which they depend.
Our Vision
Ecological systems will sustain healthy, diverse, and abundant populations of fish, wildlife, and plants, which are well adapted and continue to provide valuable ecological services in a world impacted by unprecedented and accelerating global climate change.
Purpose
The purpose of the Strategy is to inspire and enable natural resource professionals and other decision makers to take action to conserve the nation’s fish, wildlife and plants, ecosystem functions, and the human uses and values they provide in a changing climate. It provides professionals and other decision makers with a basis for sensible actions that can be taken now, in spite of the uncertainty that exists about precise impacts of climate change on living resources. It further provides guidance about what actions are most likely to promote natural resource adaptation to climate change, and describes mechanisms that will foster collaboration among all levels of government, conservation organizations and private landowners.
Guiding Principles
We adopt the following principles to lead and implement the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy:
- Build a national, not just federal framework for cooperative climate response.
- Respect jurisdictional authorities and foster communication and collaboration rather than prescription.
- Provide a blueprint for collective action that promotes collaboration and communication across government and non-government entities.
- Adopt a landscape/seascape-based approach that integrates best-available science and adaptive management.
- Focus actions and investments on natural resources of the U.S. and its Territories.
- Identify critical scientific and management needs.
- Engage the public.
- Integrate strategies for natural resources adaptation with those of other sectors.
- Identify opportunities to integrate climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.
- Act now.