News Release - 03/05/07

Congress Considers Wildlife in Climate Change Bills

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 5, 2007) —This week, Representative Ron Kind (D-WI) and Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-MD) began circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter to members of Congress, asking that wildlife be included as an important part of all global warming legislation passed by Congress. Two weeks ago, Senator Joseph Lieberman held a hearing on the impacts of climate change on wildlife. Among the many issues tied to climate change, it is clear that some of our nation's leaders believe conserving wildlife is of great importance.

Senator Lieberman is chairman of the Subcommittee on Private Sector & Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection, and he included provisions in the “Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007” (S.280) to allocate a portion of the funds from auctioned emissions allowances to fish and wildlife adaptation activities through the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program (WCRP). In addition, Representatives Gilchrest and John Olver (D-MA) also included a similar provision in their legislation, “Climate Stewardship Act of 2007 (HR.620) as has Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) in her bill, “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act” (S.317).

State fish and wildlife agencies are concerned that pervasive impacts from climate change will have landscape-level effects on fish and wildlife well into the future. In a recent letter to Lieberman, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies wrote, “Alteration of habitat, disruption to migratory patterns, changes in predator-prey interactions, and the spread of invasive species and wildlife diseases represent a few of the ways in which an altered climate will disrupt fish and wildlife populations.”

“The pressures of climate change only increase the need for pro-active conservation and management of fish and wildlife and their habitat in order to ensure their continued survival,” said Ed Parker, president of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and Bureau Chief for Natural Resources, Connecticut Dept of Environmental Protection. “When fish and wildlife are pushed to the brink, other conflicts over scarce resources are frequently exacerbated. Dedicating a portion of adaptation assistance for practical, preventive actions to conserve fish and wildlife resources can help improve larger conflicts.”

Established by Congress in 2000, the WCRP operates as a sub-account of the highly successful Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act. The program provides funding to every state and territory to support on-the-ground programs and projects aimed at keeping wildlife from

becoming endangered. Since it is based in the well-established structure of the existing state-federal partnership in wildlife conservation, the WCRP provides the most effective way to put resources on the ground and begin immediately addressing critical wildlife and habitat conservation needs.

As a requirement of the WCRP and the related State Wildlife Grants program, every state and territory recently completed a wildlife action plan (known technically as a “comprehensive wildlife conservation strategy”). Completed in 2006, each state wildlife action plan contain information on low and declining populations of wildlife, their habitats, threats, and the conservation actions that must be taken to prevent them from becoming endangered. Individually, the action plans establish a set of conservation actions for each state, but together they represent a blueprint for conservation on regional and national scale. These plans provide a clear roadmap for putting funding on the ground to address conservation needs as fish and wildlife react to the challenge of climate change.

To learn more about an individual state plan, visit http://www.wildlifeactionplans.org .

To learn more about climate and wildlife, visit http://www.teaming.com/global_climate_change.htm .

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The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies —the organization that represents all of North America's fish and wildlife agencies—promotes sound management and conservation, and speaks with a unified voice on important fish and wildlife issues. Found on the web at www.fishwildlife.org .