Earth Equity News

Fish and Wildlife Service Trying to Grapple with Climatic Changes in Habitats. By Jessica Leber, ClimateWire, January 14, 2010. "More questions than answers persist in early efforts to bring climate change into all decisions at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that manages the nation's wildlife refuges and many of its protected species. As it completes a climate strategy proposed last fall, many of the service's some 9,000 employees are already grappling with the day-to-day implications of a warming climate... Already, rising sea levels are threatening many coastal refuges, while invasive species and pests are charting a course into new terrain. And a growing pile of petitions to list new endangered or threatened species are citing global warming as either a primary or a contributing cause. Those factors will all force tough decisions at the agency, said FWS Director Sam Hamilton, from whether the agency should pull back from sinking new resources into disappearing coasts to where it designates critical habitat for wildlife listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a law already notorious for a lengthy work backlog and endless litigation... The agency will have to decide whether it can designate critical habitat for a species outside of its current occupied range or even outside of its historic range. It could go so far as actually moving species to safer terrain, where snow won't melt or a marsh won't flood in the future. Hamilton called these options possibilities but said they are uncharted territory that will require better scientific and legal work. 'We don't have the policies in place at this point to really dive into these issues,' he said. 'When do you decide, for example, that you can no longer protect something in the wild?'"