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Global Warming Makes Wildlife Management Difficult

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 June 2008, 12:10 CDT

Imagine a world where sagebrush grows in the northernmost reaches of Alaska. Where the Baltimore oriole no longer lives in Baltimore and the American finch can be found only in Canada.

Snowshoe hares will turn white before the snow arrives, making them easy prey. Birds and bats will arrive in the spring before the insects -- their main source of food.

Along with the pikas and polar bears, 20 to 40 percent of the world's known species could go extinct within a century -- no matter what wildlife managers do.

That world may not be a figment of imagination, and it may come sooner than you think. It is the world that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientists predict we'll see before the end of this century -- and one they presented to federal land and wildlife managers, scientists and others Tuesday at the Boise Centre on The Grove on the first day of a two-day conference to examine how climate change will affect natural resources management.

Even if people can dramatically reduce greenhouse gases, which scientists say are the major cause of warming, experts warn the warming will continue for decades until the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dissipates.

The changes will be far-reaching.

Today's wildlife refuges may end up too far south or too low in elevation to house the animals they were created to protect.

National parks that the government strives to return to a pristine pre-Columbian state will face far different climates than the historic weather that shaped them.

And wildlife managers and federal policymakers could have to make what has long been known as "Noah's choice," for the Biblical story of the ark that saved man and animals from the flood. With so many species facing extinction and limited resources, someone will have to choose which animals to save.

This week is the first time that resource agencies have brought together the people who will have to manage the refuges, parks, wildlife populations, forests and rangeland. The changing reality of the ecosystems they manage is forcing them to reconsider their priorities and the way they will do their jobs in the future.

"We realize that so much of what we know is looking backward," said Anne Kinsinger, Western regional director of the U.S. Geological Survey, who organized the conference. "That's no longer relevant."

Now, managers strive to maintain the ecosystems that may have existed for hundreds of years. If the climate has changed, maintaining those cooler ecosystems simply won't be possible.

Managers are going to face challenges like none they have seen in their careers, said Jeff Burgett, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As species and the ecological communities on which they depend move north and up mountains to adjust to warming temperatures, existing wildlife refuges will become obsolete and management plans worthless.

"We need to develop an entirely new conservation paradigm," said Jean Brennan, a climate scientist with the Defenders of Wildlife.

Instead of protecting the habitat species need today, managers must begin to develop predictive tools to preserve their habitat in the future. They need to be able to make it possible for the animals and plants to move to the new areas in a landscape fragmented by human development, Brennan said.

Managers, environmental groups and the public in general also will have to reconsider the laws, institutions and bureaucracy in place now to meet the swiftly changing conditions.

The Endangered Species Act has made it nearly impossible to authorize the extinction of a species. But in a world where a third or more of all known species could go extinct, should the government officially make the choice to allow an animal or plant to disappear forever?

"Yes," Brennan said.

The Endangered Species Act and all existing federal resources laws and rules will have to be rewritten to make them more effective. The National Park Service, for example, has a goal to restore the parks to how they were before Europeans settled in the New World, but that's now seen as an impossible task in a warmer world.

"We have to ask ourselves how we adapt the way we make decisions," said Elizabeth Gray, a Nature Conservancy scientist.

She is working on a study that will analyze what ecosystems and species in the Pacific Northwest are most sensitive to climate change.

That kind of analysis, along with better predictive data based on climate change models, are the strategies managers are exploring.

But the way the federal government makes decisions will have to change, too. As the climate changes, managers will have to act before they have all the information, Burgett said. They will need to take more risks to protect species.

"It will involve tradeoffs and recognition that some species won't make it," Burgett said.

Source: The Idaho Statesman, Boise

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