plan emphasizes reactive approaches in the short term. Although planning and management at the refuge and landscape scale will continue to be important, we must recognize that, over time, a changing climate may transform these areas into new habitats, new ecosystems and new landscapes. If the Refuge System is to continue to fulfill its mission, we must undertake a comprehensive assessment of the challenges that climate change poses. Such an assessment will allow us to better understand the vulnerability of ecosystems and plant and animal populations to environmental change. As this occurs, the Service should shift to a more proactive approach to conserving and managing refuge lands and waters. Targeted restoration will also be necessary in many wildlife refuges to bring altered landscapes back into balance. Restoration efforts should create landscape-level habitats or habitat complexes capable of supporting viable populations of target species; be resilient to short-term climate fluctuations and long-term climate change; restore as many ecosystem processes as possible on the landscape; integrate partnerships with other agencies, groups and private landowners; and integrate with future acquisition efforts. The Refuge System also needs to quantify and reduce its overall carbon footprint. Refuge system operations and facilities generate heat-trapping gases and have other impacts on the environment and wildlife. The Service’s stewardship of the Refuge System should provide cutting-edge leadership in reducing carbon emissions and implementing sustainable, green business practices. Our plans should include prioritizing land restoration activities that effectively sequester carbon.
38 Wildlife and Wildlands
Recommendation 2: Develop a climate change
implementation plan for the National Wildlife Refuge System that dovetails with other conservation partners’ climate change action plans and specifically provides guidance for conducting vulnerability assessments of climate change impacts to refuge habitats and species as well as direction for innovation in the reduction of emissions and improved energy efficiency on federal lands.
Strategic Growth of the Refuge System The National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act provides clear direction to the Service to “plan and direct the continued growth of the System in a manner that is best designed to accomplish the mission of the System, to contribute to the conservation of the ecosystems of the United States, to complement efforts of States and other Federal agencies to conserve fish and wildlife and their habitats, and to increase support for the System and participation from conservation partners and the public.” The Service’s land protection strategies in the future must be cutting edge and visionary, placing refuges in the context of landscape conservation. We must consider how established and future refuges, other protected areas and working landscapes can function collectively to conserve fish, wildlife and their habitats for future generations. This is key to the effort to conserve America’s great outdoors. The Service is committed to being an active partner, leader and catalyst in this effort. Strategic growth of the Refuge System requires creating a portfolio of prioritized acquisition sites based on an adaptive management strategy. To create our land protection portfolio, we need to define the Refuge System’s Conserving the Future 39