U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Key Points
Climate Change Strategic Plan
September 2010
UL Bend NWR by J & K Hollingsworth
Our Strategic Plan establishes specific
goals and objectives to accomplish
priority commitments as integral and
essential elements of broader strategies
designed to address climate change. Our
strategies focus on three key elements:
n Adaptation: Helping to reduce the
impacts of climate change on fish,
wildlife, plants and their habitats;
n Mitigation: Reducing levels of
greenhouse gases in the Earth’s
atmosphere; and,
n Engagement: Reaching out to
Service employees; local, national and
international partners in the public and
private sectors; key constituencies and
stakeholders; and the broader citizenry
of this country to join forces and seek
solutions to the challenges to fish and
wildlife conservation posed by climate
change.
The plan recognizes that no single
organization or agency can succeed
fully in its mission without the
support and involvement of others.
This vision commits us to a new
philosophy of conservation, rooted in true
interdependence, which calls us to:
n Commit our personnel and assets to
shared and explicit objectives, goals,
and targets and, whenever possible, to
joint undertakings;
n Use the core principles of adaptive
management and collectively planning,
implementing, evaluating and
adjusting management approaches;
and,
n Design and apply landscape
conservation strategies, principles and
tools.
Our Strategic Plan is primarily for
our employees and our organization.
It provides direction and focuses our
talents, creativity and energy on goals,
objectives, strategies and actions we
believe will be successful in the challenge
to sustain fish, wildlife, plants and their
habitats in a changing climate. Our plan
also defines our role within the larger
conservation community and commits us
to specific conservation strategies.
Our Strategic Plan is an integral part of
the Department of the Interior’s strategy
for addressing climate change.
n The DOI Energy and Climate Change
Task Force, established by Secretary
Salazar, is focusing on initiatives
designed to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and apply adaptive
management strategies to address
landscape-scale climate challenges.
Those initiatives include:
Tracking and reducing DOI’s carbon
footprint and energy usage;
Emphasizing biological carbon
sequestration on DOI lands;
Integrating and enhancing science
and data collection on climate change
impacts, and;
Improving capacity for science-based
decision support for adaptive
management.
n Our Climate Change Strategic Plan
mirrors these priorities, and will
enable the Service to play a key role
in achieving Departmental objectives
related to climate change.
Our Strategic Plan calls for bold,
aggressive action. It outlines a number
of commitments we believe will help
reshape the face of conservation and
enable us to play a leading role in
addressing the challenges of a changing
climate system. These include:
n Facilitate development of a National
Fish and Wildlife Climate
Adaptation Strategy to be the
conservation community’s shared
blueprint to guide wildlife adaptation
partnerships over the next 50-100
years.
n Help create a National Biological
Inventory and Monitoring
Partnership that strategically
deploys the conservation community’s
monitoring resources. The Partnership
would generate empirical data needed
to track climate change effects on the
distribution and abundance of fish,
wildlife, plants and their habitats;
model predicted population and habitat
change; and help us determine if we
are achieving our goals.
n Build Landscape Conservation
Cooperatives that develop regional
and field technical capacity by working
with partners to provide cutting
edge science and information. These
cooperatives will be the primary
vehicle through which the Service and
our partners acquire and apply the best
climate change science to biological
planning and conservation design for
fish and wildlife management.
n Deliver conservation to the most
vulnerable species through various
activities, including but not limited
to identifying priority water needs,
addressing habitat fragmentation,
managing genetic resources, reducing
non-climate stressors, and conducting
other resource management actions.
n Inform stakeholders on wildlife
conservation issues related to
energy development and policy and
facilitate development of renewable
energy sources in a manner that
helps conserve species and avoids
or minimizes significant impacts
to sensitive fish, wildlife, and plant
species.
n Reduce the carbon footprint of Service
facilities, vehicles, and workforce,
becoming carbon neutral by 2020.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
n Develop expertise in biological
carbon sequestration—sequestering
greenhouse gases in plant biomass
while also creating or restoring
priority native fish, wildlife and plant
habitats.
n Facilitate habitat conservation
through carbon sequestration at
the international level. By working
with international partners and
stakeholders to help reduce
deforestation rates in key areas,
such as tropical forests, we will help
preserve areas critical to biodiversity
conservation and support greenhouse
gas mitigation.
The Service’s Climate Change Strategic
Plan is a blueprint for action in a time of
uncertainty. It calls for the Service and
its partners to step up to the challenges
before us, lay the foundation for wise
decision making in the future and take
steps now to ensure that our nation’s fish
and wildlife resources will thrive in the
years to come.
For more information, visit
http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/
