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In the face of climate change and biodiversity loss, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced it is working on new rules to help national wildlife refuge managers more effectively address climate change impacts by updating current management strategies that were based on stable conditions.
The agency is proposing to both revise the existing Biological Integrity, Diversity, and Environmental Health (BIDEH) policy and implement a new rule that will guide management of national wildlife refuges. According to the FWS, “Climate change is transforming historical species composition and ecological function of habitats, creating new challenges to traditional wildlife management strategies that were based on stable, stationary baseline conditions.”
The FWS concedes that historical conditions may need to “serve as a reference point” rather than an end goal, given the impacts of climate change, which would alter the targets a refuge manager might set for the restoration of habitat or wildlife populations. “This proposed language would untether current and future management actions from sustaining historical conditions that may no longer be possible on many refuges,” the FWS said.
The National Wildlife Refuge System spans 850 million land and marine acres across a network of 570 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts. According to the agency, there is a national wildlife refuge within an hour’s drive of most major metropolitan areas, and more than 67 million Americans visit refuges every year.
Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe calls for creation of Kw'tsán National Monument
The Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe is calling on President Joe Biden to protect more than 390,000 acres of the Tribe’s homelands located in Imperial County, California as the Kw'tsán National Monument. The land within the proposed monument area is currently managed by the Bureau of Land Management and contains incredible cultural, ecological, recreational, scenic, and historic values that the Tribe is asking be preserved for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations. “The Kw'tsán National Monument is directly adjacent to our reservation but encompasses the heart of our aboriginal homelands,” said Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe Council Member Donald W. Medart, Jr. “This national monument will protect the trails, desert life, petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and lithics that we have in our surrounding desert. The Quechan people have been in this area since time immemorial, and we intend to protect these lands until the end of time.”
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Nevada is the Saudi Arabia of sunlight in the USA.”
