FWS Climate Change Strategy

FWS Carbon Footprint Baseline Report

What You Can Do (EPA)

National Geographic Green Guide

Carbon Sequestration Fact Sheet

USFWS Sustainability Bulletin #1

USFWS Sustainability Bulletin #2

Mitigation - Reducing Our Carbon Footprint

Mitigation is defined by the IPCC as human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Mitigation involves reducing our “carbon footprint” by using less energy, consuming fewer materials, and appropriately altering our land management practices. Mitigation is also achieved through biological carbon sequestration, the process in which CO2 from the atmosphere is taken up by plants through photosynthesis and stored as carbon in tree trunks, branches and roots. Sequestering carbon in vegetation such as bottomland hardwood forests or native prairie grasses can often restore or improve habitat and directly benefit fish and wildlife.

Service planned actions include:

• Reducing the carbon footprint of its facilities, vehicles and workforce and become carbon neutral by 2020.

• Developing expertise in biological carbon sequestration — sequestering greenhouse gases in plant biomass, while also creating or restoring priority native fish and wildlife habitats — and foster efforts to sequester carbon on lands it manages.

• Facilitating 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, the Service will help preserve areas critical to biodiversity conservation and support greenhousegas mitigation.