The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Issues its Draft Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change and a 5-Year Implementation Action Plan

On September 23, 2009, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a proposed Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change that could facilitate the future listing of additional species, require implementation of new mitigation measures such as sequestration, and shape developments that impact fish, wildlife or habitat. The plan includes the Service’s goals, actions and objectives to sustain fish, wildlife and habitats, nationally and internationally, in the face of climate change. These goals, objectives and actions are categorized in three key strategies: adaptation, mitigation and engagement. In addition, Appendix A of the plan is a 5-Year Action Plan for Implementing the Climate Change Strategic Plan, which includes discrete “actions” for achieving the Service’s goals and objectives.

Adaptation According to the plan, “adaptation” is the core of the Service’s response to climate change and the centerpiece of the plan. It includes planned management actions that the Service will implement to help reduce climate change impacts on fish, wildlife and their habitat. The Service’s adaptive response to climate change involves “Strategic Habitat Conservation,” or strategic conservation of habitats within sustained landscape conservation. The plan identifies three goals and several objectives to achieve adaptation and Strategic Habitat Conservation. The goals and key objectives include:

Goal: Develop long-term capacity for biological planning and conservation design, and apply it to drive conservation at broad landscape scales.

This goals will be achieved through a series of proposed objectives including, but not limited to, developing a National Fish and Wildlife Adaptation Strategy (which will likely consist of an agreement among major conservation interests that identifies and defines principles and methods to maintain ecosystems and functions needed to sustain fish, wildlife and plant resources), conducting species and habitat vulnerability assessments, and incorporating climate change considerations in Service activities and decisions, including in its planning management and restoration efforts.

Goal: Plan and deliver near-term and long-term landscape conservation actions that support climate change adaptation by fish, plants, wildlife and habitats of ecological and societal significance.

The proposed objectives to achieve this goal include, but are not limited to, implementing the National Fish and Wildlife Adaptation Strategy, taking conservation action for climate-vulnerable species, including the possibly listing of the species under the Endangered Species Act, identifying and filling priority freshwater needs to ensure that water resources of adequate quantity and quality are available to support biological objectives for fish and wildlife, conserving coastal and marine resources, and reducing non-climate change ecosystem stressors such as land use changes, invasive species, unnatural wildfires and contaminations.

Goal: Develop monitoring and research partnerships that make available complete and objective information to plan, deliver, evaluate, and improve actions that facilitate fish and wildlife adaptations to accelerating climate change.

Development of a national biological inventory and monitoring partnership and a research and monitoring capability for use in landscape conservation are among the objectives to achieve this goal.

Mitigation

Mitigation is the second strategy identified in the plan and involves reducing carbon footprints by using less energy, consuming fewer materials, altering land management practices and implementing sequestration (the process by which CO2 from the atmosphere is taken up by plants through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in plants or biomass). The Service’s main goal is to achieve carbon neutrality as an organization by 2020. Like adaptation, the plan identifies goals and several objectives to achieve the mitigation. The goals and key objectives include:

Goal: Change the Service’s business practices to achieve carbon neutrality by the Year 2020.

This goal will be achieved by assessing and reducing the carbon footprint of the Service’s facilities, vehicles, workforce and operations, and the Service’s land management practices. In addition, the Service will offset the remaining carbon balance.

Goal: To conserve and restore fish and wildlife habitat at landscape scales, the Service will build its capacity to understand, apply and share biological carbon sequestration science and will work with partners to sequester atmospheric greenhouse gases in strategic locations.

The proposed objectives to accomplish this goal include, but are not limited to, developing standards, guidelines and best management practices for biological carbon sequestration, and integrating biological carbon sequestration activities into landscape conservation approaches.

Engagement

The final strategy identified in the plan is engagement, which entails reaching out to Service employees; local, national and international partners in the public and private sectors; key constituencies and stakeholders; and citizens to seek solutions to the challenges and threats posed by climate change to fish and wildlife conservation. The following is the sole goal identified in the plan for achieving engagement. In addition, the key objectives are listed below.

Goal: Encourage collaborative conservation to seek solutions to the impacts of climate change and other 21st Century stressors of fish, wildlife and habitats.

Providing Service employees with climate change information, education and training, sharing climate change information, education and training opportunities, and forging alliances, creating forums to exchange information and knowledge and influencing international policy are the objectives proposed to accomplish the engagement goal.

Public review and comment period on the draft plan runs until November 23, 2009. The draft plan and 5-Year Action Plan are available at http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/strategic_plan.html .

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