Conservation Northwest

Homecoming for wildlife Erin Moore Publications manager, Not only coming back Staying and thriving Changes in climate and land use are important pieces of the wildlife homecoming puzzle. What can we do to best ensure a future for Northwest flora and fauna? How can we help wildlife not only come back, but stay and thrive? We talked to two top climate scientists about connectivity and adaptation. Meade Krosby is a research scientist in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. Her work addresses how best to restore and maintain landscape connectivity in a changing climate in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. CNW: How can we best ensure that returning wildlife are here to stay? MK: Species survived past episodes of climate change primarily by moving. Generally speaking, species shifted their geographic ranges upward in elevation and latitude as climates warmed, and then back down as climates cooled. Wildlife are already starting to do this now in response to current warming, but widespread habitat fragmentation and the rapid rate of warming are going to pose major challenges to adapting in this way. So the big question, given limited conservation resources, is where and how we should be increasing landscape connectivity to help species respond to climate change, and how to do this despite so much uncertainty around what future climate change will actually look like. With the Washington Connected Landscapes Project, we're identifying corridors that will help the greatest number of species respond to climate change. For us, this has meant focusing on what we already know: wildlife are generally moving uphill and northward. So we try to design corridors that allow for movement in erin@conservationnw.org those directions. The working group is a collaborative, sciencebased effort to identify opportunities and priorities to provide connected habitat for wildlife in Washington. The group's breadth and depth, in terms of institutional diversity and capacity, are remarkable, and offer an incredible working model for collaboration and research. Fragmentation is so pervasive and such a growing threat and connectivity is so important that the partnership of the working group is an example of using our best strengths to help solve the problems to come. For wildlife, conflict with humans is likely to ultimately be more important than direct impacts from climate change itself. Climate change is going to change where and how people use the landscape, which could accelerate habitat destruction and conflict with wildlife. We can help reduce that conflict with wildlife corridors. Washington's I-90 Wildlife Bridges Coalition is a great example of diverse groups getting behind connectivity to give wildlife avenues that could help them adapt to climate change. Josh Lawler is a scientist, modeler, and associate professor of landscape ecology and conservation at the College of the Environment, University of Washington. He is particularly interested in the ways human activities affect ecological systems, protected lands, and wildlife. CNW: What should we be doing better or differently to conserve wildlife? JL: The models we work with tell us to expect lots of change. Many species will need to move and many ecosystems will change—often dramatically. We will have to learn to be comfortable with so much change. We're also going to have to decide what we want out of landscapes not just what they can provide. If we decide we want wildlife habitat and carbon sequestration, then we will have to work to ensure we get those things. Adaptive management is one of the best tools we have to address change. It involves paying attention to how wildlife respond to management and then adjusting our actions as we go along. Other useful tools include some of those we have been using all along. Protected areas, particularly large and well-connected ones, will help species and systems respond to climate change. Increasing connectivity has also been in our toolbox for a long time—but we will need to think about it differently now. In the past, we modeled movement of species from one patch of habitat to another. Now we are looking hard at how wildlife will move from what is now habitat to what is not habitat now but will be habitat in the future. That's a big change in our thinking and requires new models and research. (Above) Linkage model for general forest carnivores showing possible ("least-cost," in green) pathways for wildlife. Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group 14 Fall 2013conservationnw.org

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