Fish and Wildlife Service

Internal Discussion Drafts: Climate Change Strategic Plan and 5-Year Action Plan

Climate change is the most compelling conservation challenge of our time. Accelerating climate change will amplify current resource management challenges involving habitat fragmentation, degradation, and loss, as well as urbanization, invasive species, disease, parasites, and water management. As rising temperatures affect the dynamics of complex natural systems, the potential exists for mass species extinctions and disruptions.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its employees are in a unique position to help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to a rapidly changing climate. As the nation’s principal federal agency dedicated to fish and wildlife conservation, our employees are specialists in wildlife management and ecosystem dynamics, and have extensive experience working with partners to protect and conserve our nation’s fish and wildlife resources.

Facing the climate change challenge requires working on a landscape level to integrate our efforts with those of partners like other federal, state and tribal agencies, conservation groups and academic institutions. Moving forward, we will engage partners in a dialogue about working together to apply our resources with the best science to ensure landscapes are capable of sustaining America’s fish and wildlife for generations to come.

For several months, a team of career Service employees has worked to develop a draft Climate Change Strategic Plan to guide the Fish and Wildlife Service’s climate change work. The draft plan emphasizes adaption, mitigation, and education, and provides flexibility for our managers to be responsive to evolving science, technology, and implementation.

Along with this draft strategic plan, the team has developed a series of short-term actions, which are already beginning to be implemented, and a draft 5-Year Action Plan detailing longer-term actions to implement the Strategic Plan when it is finalized.

As we refine and finalize the draft strategic plan and draft action plan based on employee and partner feedback in the months ahead, we will move quickly to begin identifying and filling knowledge gaps, expanding capability to plan and work with partners, identifying the habitats and corridors most important across landscapes, and effectively anticipating and addressing climate change.

The documents you are reviewing are internal discussion drafts. We are now in the process of soliciting employee feedback on the draft Climate Change Strategic Plan and 5-Year Action Plan, which have been distributed for discussion purposes only. Once we have integrated comments from employees, we will also provide opportunity for comment from partners and the public. The documents will not be final until these processes are completed and the documents are published in final form, which we expect to occur in late-summer or fall of 2009. Until they are finalized, these draft documents do not represent the official position of the Service, or commit the agency to implement any proposed actions.

Read the draft Strategic Plan

Read the draft Action Plan