For U.S. Wildlife, a Climate Change Blueprint

New efforts to measure what warming temperatures are doing to forests, streams and animals at a regional level are at the core of a strategic plan by the Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to the effects of climate change. The service said Monday that it had created a scientific team charged with identifying animals that are particularly vulnerable to climate change — not only obviously susceptible cold-weather species like polar bears and walruses, but also animals less visibly at risk like the wolverine, for example. The service said it would also be working with eight new climate stations run by the United States Geological Survey that will take detailed measurements of how local ecologies are changing as global temperatures rise. The new centers, three of which are already active, will measure things like changes in snow pack, soil moisture and stream temperatures — seemingly small details that can mean life and death to some creatures. In addition, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it was working with partners to establish the first generation of landscape conservation cooperatives, 21 in all. The idea behind the cooperatives, which are to include land managers for other federal and state agencies, is to prepare resource managers so they can be better equipped to deal with changing conditions on the landscape...more