Tackling the Global Warming Threat

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that administers the National Wildlife Refuge System, must be true to its wildlife conservation mission and take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations and mitigate the effects of global warming. Refuge operations must conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Energy efficiency should guide agency policies and the procurement process for everything from replacing aging infrastructure to building new facilities to acquiring vehicles.

Planning for the future

Although strong and effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is critical to minimize the potential impacts of global warming, the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere over the past 100 years makes some degree of climate change inevitable. National wildlife refuges must develop strategies to protect wildlife populations and the ecosystems on which they depend from these changes to the fullest extent possible.

Perhaps the single-most important step the Fish and Wildlife Service can take is to begin considering the implications of global warming in its long-range planning, particularly the comprehensive conservation planning each refuge is required to do. The dramatic ecological changes already observed in response to global warming call for a new kind of conservation planning that carefully considers the effects of specific warming-related impacts such as rising sea levels, habitat shifts and the increasing intensity of hurricanes.

For example:

  • Rising sea levels:
    More than 160 refuges sit in coastal areas sensitive to increasing sea levels. As documented in this report, low-lying refuges are extremely important to wildlife conservation. In many areas, the natural processes that normally allow marshes and other habitats to adapt to changing sea levels are already constrained by human development or simply will not be able to keep up with the speed at which sea levels are rising. The Fish and Wildlife Service must begin planning to determine the feasibility of restoring and enhancing natural adaptive processes, to acquire land at higher ground and further inland to allow coastal systems to migrate, and to develop infrastructure to protect these areas. In particular, the agency must consider future sea-level rises before investing in new parcels of low-lying marsh.
  • Habitat shifts:
    Plant species are moving to more northerly latitudes and higher altitudes, especially in Alaska and alpine areas. As the climate continues to warm, the habitat a refuge was set aside to protect may shift outside of the refuge. Species will also migrate, each one shifting differently, creating new habitat mosaics and challenging the refuge to maintain the species for which it is responsible. The Fish and Wildlife Service must start planning now to cope with these changes on and off the refuges.
  • Hurricanes:
    The devastating hurricane season of 2005 destroyed habitat and facilities on more than 60 national wildlife refuges—damage it will take more than $260 million to repair. The Fish and Wildlife Service must do more than simply rebuild after each hurricane. The agency should form a task force, including experts outside the agency, to plan how to best manage refuges in hurricane-prone areas and how to minimize storm damage and allow habitats to withstand and recover from storms.

Besides incorporating these types of changes into comprehensive conservation planning for refuges, the Fish and Wildlife Service, as part of its wildlife education and interpretation responsibilities, should include information about global warming and its effects on wildlife in refuge interpretive programs and educational materials.

Taken alone the recommendations outlined above will not reverse global warming. That will require multigenerational, multinational commitment and leadership. But they will head us in the right direction—for our refuges, our wildlife, our children and our planet.