Global Warming and Climate Change Publications

Publications from Defenders of Wildlife about global warming and climate change with a special focus on the impact on wildlife and habitat.

Reducing the Impact of Global Warming on Wildlife

Defenders of Wildlife is guiding efforts to lessen the impacts of climate change on wildlife.

Beyond Cutting Emissions
This report addresses the urgent need to make wildlife and natural resources more resilient to global warming and provides a roadmap for how the next administration can help America's wildlife and ecosystems survive the impacts of global warming.
Reducing the Impact of Global Warming on Wildlife
This report is a synthesis of Innovations in Wildlife Conservation: Reducing the Impact of Global Warming on Wildlife, a national symposium hosted by Defenders of Wildlife in 2007.
Feeling the Heat
This 4-page fact sheet provides detailed information on the impacts of global warming on specific California species and habitat areas and what you can do to help wildlife adapt and survive global warming.

Navigating the Arctic Meltdown

This solutions-based series focuses on 10 arctic species, discussing threats to the species due to global warming, and identifying real-world opportunities to help usher wildlife threatened by global warming through a 100-year bottleneck of immediate impacts from global warming. (2007)

Navigating the Arctic Meltdown: Polar Bear
Conflict, starvation and cannibalism. These bleak words evocative of an adventure tale set in the steamy tropics actually describe polar bears facing the loss of their sea-ice feeding grounds, perhaps by as early as 2040, as the Arctic climate rapidly warms.
Navigating the Arctic Meltdown: Walruses
Food or rest - which to give up? This is the harsh choice faced by walruses as global warming accelerates melting of Arctic sea ice and lengthens the distance between shallow-water feeding grounds and ice floes where the animals haul out to rest and give birth.

Read the complete Navigating the Arctic Meltdown series >>

Climate Change and Forests

Climate change is coming to a national forest near you. How much forests will be altered as a result of climate change largely depends on how much humans reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and how quickly. The effects of climate change on national forest lands will also depend in part on how forest management responds to these threats.

Implications of Climate Change for Conservation, Restoration and Management of National Forest Lands
How much forests will be altered by climate change depends on how much -- and how quickly -- humans reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The effects of climate change on national forest lands will also depend on how forest management responds to these threats. This paper summarizes key scientific literature on climate change and forests, focusing on policy and management options for the future.

Global Warming and Wildlife Refuges

One of the greatest threats to our National Wildlife Refuges is global warming. Read this report to learn more.

Refuges at Risk 2006
America's 10 most endangered national wildlife refuges 2006