Outdoor News Daily

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is targeting $2 million to support 14 projects that will boost nationwide adaptive science capacity to address climate change and other major ecological stressors.

Ranging from downscaled-climate modeling to predicting migratory bird responses to climate change, the projects will help establish a network of landscape conservation cooperatives (LCCs), a cornerstone of the Department of the Interior’s coordinated, science-based response to climate change.

LCCs are a connected system of science-management partnerships that operate within a specific landscape—21 geographic areas in all. Involved partners include federal, state, and local governments, tribes, universities, non-governmental organizations, landowners, and other stakeholders. Collectively, LCC partnerships represent a national, and ultimately, international network of land, water, wildlife and cultural resource managers and interested public and private organizations.

“We are living in an era of monumental conservation challenges, including the loss and fragmentation of habitats, genetic isolation, invasive species, unnatural wildfire, water scarcity, and illegal wildlife trade—all of which will be magnified by the effects of rapidly changing climate,” says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Acting Director Rowan Gould. “Under these circumstances, it is imperative that resource management agencies, conservation organizations and other stakeholders work together to leverage resources and concentrate them where they will do the most good. Landscape conservation cooperatives are an essential step to support that that direction.”

The $2 million to support the LCC network is part of $10 million the agency received in fiscal year 2010 to fund adaptive science to help reduce the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats. Funded projects and lead implementers (in parentheses) include:

Climate and Biological Response: Research and Applications (NASA). Enhances the management of populations, species, communities, and ecosystems across landscapes and seascapes of concern through the development or improvement of forecasting tools for resource managers that project the impact of a changing climate. Estimated cost $100,000. User’s Guide to Climate Model Downscaling (Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech). Reviews and summarizes field data and provides recommendations for using downscaled climate model outputs with ecological response models. Estimated cost $70,000. Developing a Management Model of the Effects of Future Climate Change on Species: A Tool for Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (Audubon, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service). Models the effects of future climate change on bird distribution and status in the 48-contiguous states and provides results to the conservation planning processes for all landscape conservation cooperatives. Estimate cost $271,000. Predicting Migratory Bird Responses to Climate Change: Adjusting Adaptive Habitat and Harvest Management Frameworks for Non-stationary System Dynamics (U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Division of Migratory Bird Management). Develops models that predict a range of uncertain effects of climate change on migratory bird habitats and populations. Estimated cost $250,000.

LCCs complement the current science and ongoing conservation work of existing partnerships—such as fish habitat partnerships and migratory bird joint ventures—as well as water resources, land, and cultural partnerships. Through LCCs, partners with jurisdiction over fish and wildlife and other resources can coordinate conservation actions with each other and develop decision-support tools to assist resource managers in meeting 21st-century conservation challenges. Core functions include:

Identifying common goals and priorities Linking science and conservation actions on the ground Supporting biological planning, conservation design and adaptive management Evaluating the effectiveness of scientific information and conservation actions

The Service selected the 14 projects through a competitive process that initially included 27 projects totaling $9.2 million. All projects were required to be climate-focused, have wide utility to all or most LCCs, and require only one-year funding.

For more information on the LCC network, visit http://www.fws.gov/science/shc/lcc.html

For information on how the Service is conserving the nature of America in a changing climate, visit http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/

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