Climate: Adaptation will be key to preserving wildlife

Climate change may be altering fish and wildlife habitat throughout the country, but state wildlife officials can lessen those impacts with a host of adaptation measures–if the federal government provides enough funding to implement them, according to a report issued by a coalition of sportsmen's groups this week.

The report, entitled "Beyond Season's End," outlines several climate adaptation strategies, many of which state wildlife officials are already implementing.

The strategies include creating habitat corridors to provide escape routes for species whose native habitats are becoming uninhabitable, removing dams and other barriers from waterways so that fish can migrate, and leaving more water in streams, said William Geer, director of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership's Center for Western Lands.

"If we take a landscape-scale approach and we ensure big pieces of land have quality habitat and we can connect those pieces with other big pieces, we have a much better chance of keeping fish and wildlife in shape," said Geer, whose organization oversaw the report along with the Wildlife Management Institute.

Mallard ducks that live in prairie potholes are losing habitat because of climate change, according to a new report examining the effects of such changes on wildlife. Photo courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

But carrying out such measures at large scales will require a major influx of federal funding, Geer noted. "The funding we need for natural resource applications are beyond fish and wildlife budgets," he said.

TRCP and other groups are pushing for the inclusion of a $1 billion funding provision in a new climate bill being crafted by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) that would call for climate mitigation measures to protect natural resources.

"We need to have funding the states can count on year after year for this to be effective," Geer said.

Such measures would come none too soon, he added. Many regions are already seeing transformative changes associated with a warming climate, ranging from shifting habitats to reduced stream flows to dried-up wetlands. Such effects are harming a variety of species, from waterfowl in the Midwest to pikas in California. At the same time, climate change is encouraging the spread of invasive species, parasites and disease-causing organisms to new areas.

Geer has seen those changes in his own backyard. In Montana's Lolo Creek, which lies about half a mile from Geer's house south of Missoula, water levels drop so low in the summer now that fish populations have decreased, he said

"How we respond to the repercussions of climate change will determine the condition of the environment that we pass on to our children; it is our duty to our country and our descendants to protect and preserve the wildlife and wild places that prior generations have bequeathed to us," wrote Steve Williams, president of the Wildlife Management Institute, in the report's foreword.

While not all habitats can be protected from the impacts of climate change–for instance, mountain goats cannot move to higher ground –wildlife managers know enough about adaptation to head off the worst effects for many species, Geer said.

Tom Franklin, TRCP's director of policy and government relations, noted that wildlife managers have overcome ecological disaster in the past

"Wildlife scientists and managers restored fish and wildlife habitat and populations in the early 20th century under the severe economic and climatic conditions that created the Great Depression and dust bowl," he said. "With the support of American sportsmen, we can overcome the threat of global climate change."

"It's a matter of making the planet livable for all of us," Geer added. "These fish and wildlife species are just a whole bunch of canaries in a coal mine."