The Strategy identifies seven goals to help fish, wildlife, plants and ecosystems cope with the impacts of climate change. These goals were developed collectively by diverse teams of federal, state, and tribal technical experts, based on existing research and understanding regarding the needs of these valuable resources. Each goal identifies a set of initial strategies that should be taken or initiated over the next five to ten years.
Goals and Strategies
Goal 1: Conserve habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife, and plant populations and ecosystem functions in a changing climate.
- Sustaining a diversity of healthy populations over time requires conserving a sufficient variety and amount of habitat and building a well-connected network of conservation areas to allow the movement of species in response to climate change.
Goal 2: Manage species and habitats to protect ecosystem functions and provide sustainable cultural, subsistence, recreational, and commercial use in a changing climate.
- Incorporating climate change information into fish, wildlife, and plant management efforts is essential to safeguarding these valuable natural resources.
Goal 3: Enhance capacity for effective management in a changing climate.
- Climate change adaptation requires new ways of assessing information, new management tools and professional skills, increased collaboration across jurisdictions, and a review of laws, regulations, and policies.
Goal 4: Support adaptive management in a changing climate through integrated observation and monitoring and use of decision support tools.
- Coordinated observation, information management, and decision support systems can help management strategies to be adaptive and adjust to changing conditions.
Goal 5: Increase knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, wildlife, and plants to a changing climate.
- Research must be targeted to address key knowledge gaps and needs, and findings must be rapidly incorporated into decision support tools available to natural resource managers and other decision makers.
Goal 6: Increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants in a changing climate.
- Climate change adaptation efforts will be most successful if they have broad popular support and if key groups and people (such as private landowners) are motivated to take action.
Goal 7: Reduce non-climate stressors to help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate.
- Reducing existing threats such as habitat degradation and fragmentation, invasive species, pollution, and over-use can help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems better cope with the additional stresses caused by a changing climate.
Download a spreadsheet version of the Strategy Goals, Strategies, and Actions here.
