Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Birds like this great white heron rely heavily on coastal refuges for safe habitat. (Photo credit: Joseph Oliver)

Aimee Delach, Senior Policy Analyst, Climate Adaptation

As Julie shared last Tuesday, the National Wildlife Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), includes approximately 150 million acres of lands and waters managed primarily for wildlife conservation and protection of habitats. For many Americans, our national wildlife refuges are their best chance to see rare sights like huge flocks of migrating snow geese, endangered whooping cranes, and many other species.

One of the threats facing these amazing places is climate change. The effects of a shifting and increasingly volatile climate are already being felt across the U.S., and for the animals that make their homes in wildlife refuges  — including many species that are already threatened or endangered  — it represents a serious danger. One way climate change will continue to affect refuges is by a rise in sea levels, due to the melting of land-based ice and the expansion of the oceans as they warm. Recent studies suggest that sea-level rise could easily exceed 39 inches by 2100. That’s more than three feet! For the more than 150 national wildlife refuges located in coastal areas, sea-level rise has the potential to reshape wetlands, shift habitats inland and upland, and even put large parts of some refuges entirely underwater.

This is a concern, not just for the lands already protected as a part of the National Wildlife Refuge System, but also for lands that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to add to the system. The process that USFWS uses to add land to refuges only takes the value of current habitat into account, but not how resilient the habitat can be in the face of threats like sea-level rise. Without considering the effects of climate change as part of the deciding factor of what land to buy, USFWS may not be making the best investments of their limited funds if some of that land is going to be underwater within a few decades. So Defenders’ climate team, with the help of a summer intern from Duke University, decided to look into it ourselves.

This is what Blackwater NWR could look like by 2075. The red area — both what they have now, and what they plan to buy — will likely be completely flooded.

We assessed the sea-level rise threat to the lands within both the acquired boundary (the land the refuge already owns) and the approved boundary (the land they are planning to acquire) of eight coastal refuges. We used a publicly-available analysis tool called the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) that shows how rising sea levels will likely change the coastal landscape. The model lets you choose from among several scenarios of sea level rise over the 21st century, which is important because we don’t yet know precisely how much the climate will warm and the sea level will rise. The model then incorporates local conditions and processes to give a site-specific picture of how each area will be impacted. This is important because conditions at each site are different. Some coastal areas have rivers that are delivering sediments at a rate that could help refuge lands “keep up” with the rise. In other places, the land is eroding, which means that the local impacts of sea-level rise will be more pronounced.

We found that the impact of sea-level rise will vary among the eight refuges we investigated. Four of the refuges could have less than 5% of their land area vulnerable, while two could lose more than 40% of their refuge lands by 2075. One of the highly impacted refuges, Blackwater NWR, may be able to keep vital habitat by buying new land on the north side, where areas of marsh will persist and new marsh will be created. Great White Heron NWR, on the other hand, could run out of land entirely; it could lose almost 90% of its current land, and three-quarters of the land it plans to acquire. That would mean the loss of nesting habitat for loggerhead and green sea turtles, as well as over 250 species of birds that call the islands of Great White Heron NWR home, including the refuge’s namesake.

Too many species of wildlife depend on our nation’s coastal refuges for us to afford to lose them. These are places that provide ecological, recreational, and economic support to their communities. But they can’t do so if they find themselves underwater. We want the USFWS to make smart conservation investments in buying new land for coastal wildlife refuges, so we’re doing more than just pointing out the problem. Based on our findings, we’re offering several recommendations:

• Unless there is an immediate conservation need that justifies protecting a vulnerable parcel, or USFWS determines a parcel is important to allow for marsh habitats to transition or shift inland as sea levels rise, individual refuges should focus on acquiring land that is less vulnerable to sea-level rise.
• When a vulnerable parcel needs to be protected, USFWS should consider alternatives to land purchase, such as easements, which may be a more cost-effective way to provide protections in the short term.
• USFWS should alter approved refuge boundaries as appropriate to maximize long-term conservation benefits in the face of sea level rise. For instance, the area to the north of Blackwater NWR has wetlands that will outlast sea level rise, and moving the refuge boundary to include these would allow USFWS to protect more habitat for the long term.

We know that we face two enormous challenges as we try to protect wildlife and habitat into the future. First, climate change is posing new threats to species and altering landscapes, and in the case of coastal areas, taking some away entirely. And second, ongoing difficulties with the federal budget mean that taxpayer investment in land conservation is likely to be limited. But by understanding the effects of climate change, we can adjust our strategies to make the smartest possible investments for the future of our wildlife and the wild places they need to survive.

This table shows an overview of what we found for each of the eight refuges. To learn more, check out the report and recommendations here [PDF], or download the entire report [PDF]

With all the attention to wolves last week, here is something you may have missed.  Arctic sea ice has hit a new low, not just beating the old record, but beating it with an expected three weeks remaining in the melting season.

Arctic sea ice naturally goes through an annual cycle of expansion and contraction, with summer ice extent reaching its lowest point in September, then stabilizing and starting to expand again as the weather gets colder.  The previous record low of 1.61 million square miles occurred on September 18, 2007. The new low of 1.58 million square miles was set on August 26, 2012, with South-Carolina-sized areas of ice melting daily.  If this keeps up through mid-September, the minimum for 2012 will shatter all previous records.

The six lowest sea ice extents since satellite measurements began in 1979have all occurred in the past six years. While we don’t know for sure what the ice data looked like prior to that, the adventures of explorers searching for the fabled “Northwest Passage” remind us that heavy ice cover was once the norm.

This graph from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows the dramatic loss of Arctic ice in 2012 so far.

What’s even more alarming about the new record is that this wasn’t even a spectacularly warm summer in the Arctic. Rather, it seems that year after year of big summer ice melts have made the sea ice thinner and more fragile, thus more prone to melting each year. Cambridge University professor Peter Wadhams estimates that the ice pack “has lost at least 40% of its thickness since the 1980s, and if you consider the shrinkage as well it means that the summer ice volume is now only 30% of what it was in the 1980s.”

If all this ice loss strikes you as bad news for polar bears and other Arctic wildlife, you’re right. If you think that’s the only thing we have to worry about, think again. The difference with and without sea ice is like the difference between wearing a white shirt and a black shirt on a hot, sunny day. The white ice reflects the sun’s energy back out toward space, but the dark surface water exposed when the ice melts absorbs much more of the sun’s energy, leading to even faster heating.

And all that dark, heat-absorbing water where once there was ice leads to another problem: the icy sediments at the bottom of the sea are starting to thaw as well.Professor Peter Wadhams points out, “we are also finding the open water causing seabed permafrost to melt, releasing large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere.”

This new low is another sign that climate change isn’t an issue we can just ignore and worry about later. It’s real, it’s urgent, and it’s affecting our planet right now.

The extremes just keep coming in the weather world. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just released precipitation figures for March to May 2011 at the county and state level. What does the information mean? Well, each number on that state map shows where the state’s precipitation this spring fell in relation to the past 117 years of data: 1 means record driest, 117 means record wettest. With 117 years of data, you wouldn’t expect very many states to set a record in a single year, would you? Well this year, ten states did: Texas had its driest year on record, and nine states had their wettest. Three other states had their second-wettest spring ever, and New Mexico had its third-driest spring. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground summed it up nicely, “There’s never been a spring this extreme for combined wet and dry extremes in the U.S. since record keeping began over a century ago.”

And it’s not just here. Britain’s Guardian reports this week that Scotland just finished a record wet may, while parts of England have had spring rainfall totals more at home in the Sahara, amidst a heat wave and drought that extends over much of western Europe. China also experienced a 100-year drought this year, whereas Australia is still recovering from record floods. While La Niña is probably partly to blame, this year’s events are also consistent with the conditions researchers project are coming with climate change.

“There’s never been a spring this extreme for combined wet and dry extremes in the U.S. since record keeping began over a century ago.”

How are policymakers responding to this? Unfortunately, by going to some extremes of their own. Not content to simply avoid addressing the root causes of climate change pollution, some in Congress are now trying to prevent the government from even preparing for and responding to the impacts of climate change.  Earlier this month, the House of Representatives voted to strip funding for climate change preparation from the Department of Homeland Security – that’s the department that includes FEMA, our main federal responders to climate-related disasters, and the Coast Guard. And just last week, they did the same thing to the USDA. You read that right — the Department of Agriculture. Because unprecedented fires, floods, tornadoes, droughts and extreme temperatures couldn’t possibly have any effect on our food supply, could they?

These weather extremes should be treated as the serious and threatening events they are, and should also serve as a warning of what is to come. Our government should be taking steps to prepare us for an uncertain future, instead of pretending it’s all blue skies ahead.

Learn more:

See how Defenders is working to protect wildlife and natural places from the harmful effects of climate change.

Read more about how moves by Congress to eliminate climate change-preparation measures threatens our nation’s security.