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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, created the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy to coordinate climate change responses in both the public and private sectors. These efforts were part of the work of the now-defunct Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and one component of the Service’s overall Strategic Plan for Climate Change.
In September 2009, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed Secretarial Order No. 3289, which required bureaus and offices under the Department of the Interior’s purview to address mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change in their work. As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released Rising to the Urgent Challenge: Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change in September 2010, which lays out the Service’s response strategies focused around adaptation, mitigation, and engagement. As part of the adaptation focal area, the Service worked with partners to create the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, intended to act as a blueprint to guide adaptation action over the next 50–100 years.
The strategy’s development began in June 2009 when the Service’s National Conservation Training Center hosted a Conservation Leadership Forum to discuss the drafting of a national adaptation strategy. Attendees included representatives from federal and state natural resource agencies and non-governmental entities. A second forum was held in January 2010 to draft the strategy’s Purpose and Guiding Principles.
The strategy’s Purpose is to “provide a unified approach—reflecting shared principles and science-based practices—for reducing the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, plants, habitats, and associated ecological processes across geographic scales.” This unified approach was intended to be supported not only by the Department of the Interior’s bureaus and offices, but also by other federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Army Corps of Engineers, in addition to state, tribal, and local governments, non-governmental organizations, and private sector entities.
The Guiding Principles of the strategy include:
The Service hosted a series of listening sessions at various professional venues, meetings, and conferences to present the purpose and process of creating the strategy, which was released in March 2013. The Strategy includes seven major goals to enhance the resilience of species and habitats in a changing climate, including:
Beginning in 2016, the partners launched the Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources to acknowledge exemplary adaptation initiatives that advance the Strategy’s goals. This annual award recognizes the efforts of federal and non-federal entities working on climate adaptation and is judged by a committee of representations from the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Much of the overarching federal guidance and action on climate change mitigation and adaptation was halted due to the March 2017 Executive Order 13783, Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth, which favors less federal oversight of climate protections and encourages domestic energy production. In addition, Secretarial Order 3289 was rescinded by Secretarial Orders 3349 and 3360. As a result, a number of efforts undertaken by the U.S. Department of the Interior were significantly altered or defunded since 2017. However, the Biden Administration released Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, in January 2021, which requires each agency to submit climate action plans. On October 7, 2021, 23 agencies, including the Department of the Interior, released adaptation and resilience plans.
In early 2021, the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Network released Advancing the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy into a New Decade. The report provides updated recommendations, including investing in adaptation training, identifying and protecting refugia, directing resources towards invasive and disease management, recognizing the validity and value of Indigenous knowledge, and incorporating climate equity considerations into the allocation of financial and technical assistance mechanisms.
Resources:
Secretarial Order 3289
Secretarial Order 3349
Secretarial Order 3360
Gregg, R. M. (2021). Developing a National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy for the United States [Case study on a project of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service]. Version 2.0. Product of EcoAdapt's State of Adaptation Program. Retrieved from CAKE: http://www.cakex.org/case-studies/2753 (Last updated May 2021)
