Collide-a-scape

As I wrote here several weeks ago, global warming is already changing South Florida’s ecology. The difficulty facing land managers and field biologists is determining the extent of the change and what actions to take.  After talking with a number of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service staffers based in the southeast, I had the impression that their efforts would be hampered by a lack of hard data. It seemed to me that they were operating–for the moment–mostly on observation and gut feeling.

So this new program tracking the effects of climate change in South Florida has to be welcome news to federal biologists. The Miami Herald reports that a joint effort by the Univerisity of Florida and the U.S. Geological Survey “will monitor when flowers open and whether wetlands plants are being adversely impacted by drought conditions.”

Additionally,” monitoring stations” soon to be set up all around Florida

will keep tabs on whether plants that thrive in temperate areas — for example, the dogwood — are shifting their growth range north to escape rising temperatures.

Still, as the Miami Herald story documents,  there is increasing evidence of “ample change” to Florida’s diverse wildlife, from rising seas, warmer ocean temperatures, and storm surges. The debate over how to manage this shifting ecological landscape is sure to heat up soon.

I love to hash over climate policy and politics as much as the next peon blogger. And I love biting the ankles of melodramatic bloviators. But I also love reporting, which often means reading documents and talking with people on the phone.

So this week I’ve tried to tamp down my enthusiasm for bloggy smackdowns and do some actual reporting on climate change. I’m especially interested in how society is going to adapt to the very uncertain yet profound climate changes that are anticipated (and in some cases, already happening), no matter what greenhouse gas reduction strategies we embrace next month or next year. That remains to be seen, of course.

But there is a group of people in government who now feel it is important to act swiftly on climate change, even though the efficacy of their actions seem as fuzzy as their outcome. Thats ballsy. And damn admirable.

I’ve focused on the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) because, well, I’m familiar with its mission and the people charged with carrying it out.  Over the years I’ve written a lot about endangered species and conservation biology-related issues. I’ve spent countless hours in field offices and in the field with dedicated and unsung FWS biologists. Long ago I realized that their task as the nation’s principal stewards of wildlife was herculean and thankless. And that was before any of them ever uttered a word about climate change to me.

So after I learned that the Service was undergoing a major strategy shift that embedded climate change as a core concern of its mission,  I started calling two places where I’ve covered ecological issues extensively–Arizona and Florida. (Additionally, I spoke with FWS staff in Virginia and North Carolina.)

I discussed here the two types of adaptive managment likely to be broadly implemented, and some of the specific challenges climate change poses for Arizona wildlife biologists.

When talking with FWS biologists in the southeast, I was struck by how they all expressed the same immediate concern about climate change: sea level rise and storm surges.

And they all voiced the same sense of urgency mixed with frustration, which Howard Phillips, the manager at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, in Columbia, North Carolina said best:

The big issue is not whether climate change is occurring but how fast is the change happening and how can species deal with it.

Phillip Hughes, an endangered species biologist with FWS in Big Pine Key, Florida, said a day doesn’t go by where climate change isn’t mentioned–either in a meeting, presentation or in passing conversation.

For him, ameliorating some of the fallout from climate change has become a priority. “When I cam here [six years ago], all I would talk about and deal with is habitat destruction and the recovery plans. So that was a fulltime job, including ‘don’t feed the deer’ and ‘drive slowly,’ and that’s still a big part of the job. But now I find myself increasingly focused on these new and ominous threats related to sea level rise and storm surges.”

For example, Hughes told me that storm surges (from hurricanes) in recent years have devastated the key tree cactus. (Yes, hurricanes are a natural shaper of the Florida landscape, but FWS biologists believe that more frequent storms, combined with the creeping sea rise already documented by NOAA–presents a clear and present danger to wildlife and ecosystems.) “The  [key tree cactus] declined 80 percent,” said Hughes, “which for a long lived cactus is tantamount to plummeting towards extinction.” After the storms, FWS salvaged tissue and seeds, what Hughes calls “down and doomed parts.” There is a plan afoot to move the tree cactus to higher ground, using those salvaged materials to propagate a new population.

Will it work? Who knows? But people like Hughes aren’t waiting around for a cap and trade treaty. They’re not even thinking much about the ins and outs of a national climate change policy. They’re already implementing their own version on the fly.

As I outlined here, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) is grappling with global warming in a big way. Additionally, federal biologists from Florida to Arizona are currently at work on new long-range plans that factor in the unpredictable effects of climate change on vulnerable species. It’s a complicated task, fraught with many uncertainties.

Yet they are proceeding.  “Among us biologists, climate change is a real issue that we have to deal with now,” Scott Richardson, a FWS biologist based in Tucson, Arizona, told me today. There, in the biodiversity-rich Sonoran desert, where  invasive species and sprawl are already stressing the native ecosystem to a near breaking point, climate change is a devilish wild card.

“Most of the [climate] models out there show the Southwest becoming hotter and drier, beyond what it already is,” says Richardson. “It’s assumed that many species will shift north, but in some places like the Sky Islands–our mountain ranges–you can’t go north. You can go higher, but you can only move up so far.” That means less suitable habitat for at-risk species such as the Mexican spotted owl and mount Graham squirrel.

As if crafting these new recovery plans  weren’t complex enough, federal biologists also have to decide which species have the best shot at making it. Says Richardson, “The really frustrating thing about this is that you have to prioritize because resources and funding are limited. What you hope for is that you’re basing your decision on the best information available.”

Even then, success is far from assured. As described in its draft strategic plan, the FWS identifies two types of adaptive managment for climate change: “reactive” and “anticipatory.”

For example, “combating rising sea level by pumping sand ashore to replenish beaches and maintain habitat for nesting sea turtles and shorebirds” is considered reactive adaptation.

The second approach manages “toward future, and often less certain, landscape conditions by predicting and working with the effects of climate change.” So to use the same example, anticipatory adaptation would mean sacrificing existing beaches to rising sea level to focus instead on establishing “new shorelines landward for nesting sea turtles and shorebirds.”

And you got pissed off at piping plovers because their seasonal nesting protections cut into your beach volleyball. How does no beach at all strike you?

I jest. What I’m getting at here is that safeguarding vulnerable wildlife from climate change will require many tough calls in the months and years ahead. Land managers and biologists are already agonizing over this.

Tomorrow, Florida FWS biologists weigh in with their titanic climate change quandry.

While public debate in the U.S. swirls over the best and quickest course of action to reduce carbon emissions, another  debate on global warming is quietly unfolding in anonymous government offices across the country: how to manage wildlife and ecosystems that are certain to be greatly impacted by the forces of climate change already underway.

The daunting challenges are broadly spelled out in this 32-page strategic plan put forth in December by the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service (which FWS is careful to label an “internal discussion draft”). As this passage makes clear, there is obvious concern that the “unprecendented scope and magnitude” of climate change may overwhelm the agency’s best efforts:

In the history of wildlife conservation, the Service and the larger conservation community have
never experienced a challenge that is so ubiquitous across the landscape.  Our existing
conservation infrastructure will be pressed to the limit — quite likely beyond its limit — to
respond successfully.

Thus, some tough decisions lie ahead. The FWS envisions

that some populations and species will be lost, and some will only survive in
the wild through our direct and continuous intervention.  We will be especially challenged to
conserve species and habitats that are particularly vulnerable to climate-driven changes, but we
will dedicate our best efforts and expertise to the task, recognizing that we cannot save everything. We will need to make choices, and we will need to apply ourselves where we can make the greatest difference.

In my next post, I’ll describe the two courses of action that will guide federal wildlife management in the years to come. I’ll also speak with several biologists about the most vulnerable habitat and species they see threatened immediately by climate change.