Final Report: Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 2
Dates
Publication Date
2022-02-16
Citation
Molly Cross, 2022-02-16, Final Report: Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 2: .
Summary
Time and money for conservation are limited, so there is a need for responsible investments that embrace the realities of climate change. Droughts, floods, wildfires, hotter temperatures, declining snowpack, and changing streamflow are already significantly affecting wildlife and their habitats. In some cases, managers may decide to make strategic adjustments in how their actions are designed, where those actions are located, and when actions are needed most, in order to achieve management goals. A key part of making these forward-looking decisions is having access to climate information that can be integrated into an agency’s decision-making process. When science is conducted without an understanding of how that research might be [...]
Summary
Time and money for conservation are limited, so there is a need for responsible investments that embrace the realities of climate change. Droughts, floods, wildfires, hotter temperatures, declining snowpack, and changing streamflow are already significantly affecting wildlife and their habitats. In some cases, managers may decide to make strategic adjustments in how their actions are designed, where those actions are located, and when actions are needed most, in order to achieve management goals. A key part of making these forward-looking decisions is having access to climate information that can be integrated into an agency’s decision-making process. When science is conducted without an understanding of how that research might be incorporated into a management decision, the information produced may not be useful to decision makers.
We addressed these concerns by creating an opportunity for wildlife and habitat managers and climate experts to work hand-in-hand to discuss how changing landscapes might affect management decisions, identify available climate science that can inform those decisions, and identify gaps in available knowledge that need to be filled in order to make better, climate-informed decisions. Our multi-year project had three parts: 1) Asking state wildlife managers in the North Central region what species, habitats, or issues are high priorities for their agencies and constituencies, and vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate, 2) Working with one of those state wildlife agencies—the Wyoming Game and Fish Department--to develop and apply a process for integrating best-available climate science and expert opinion into the Wyoming Statewide Habitat Plan, and 3) Identifying management-relevant information gaps that could drive climate research investments by the North Central CASC and others, to better inform future management decisions. The climate-informed Wyoming Statewide Habitat Plan and other project products offer useful models for making climate science actionable and relevant for managers’ decisions.
