Climate change is transforming Arctic Alaska and is impacting it's spectacular wildlife populations. This region is renowned for its polar bear, muskox, vast herds of barren ground caribou, and the millions of migratory birds that come from around the globe to breed on the Arctic coastal plain. Projections for the near future indicate that the Arctic is changing dramatically, not incrementally, due to the cascading effects from steadily increasing temperatures. What such profound changes mean for wildlife conservation is not clear.
Goals
We are currently working collaboratively within WCS across three priority landscapes in North America: Arctic Alaska,Yellowstone Rockies, and Adirondack State Park, to enhance our ability to develop feasible site- and target-specific climate-change adaptation strategies for action. Because these three regions represent a cross-section of issues, doing so will also allow us to learn about similarities and dissimilarities of climate change planning and action across a broad range of circumstances.
WCS is striving to better understand the impacts of climate change on Arctic Alaskan wildlife and to work with stakeholders and experts to pool our knowledge and develop strategies to promote effective land-use decisions and adaptive management practices that will minimize impacts to wildlife in a changing climate.
Activities
Emerging Wildlife Conservation Priorities
In April 2009 WCS convened a workshop of expert stakeholders scientists and managers concerned with wildlife and landscapes of Arctic Alaska. The resulting White Paper presents an overview of stakeholder discussion and tentative consensus for a diversity of topics that reflect emerging wildlife conservation priorities of a changing Arctic Alaska. The subsequent conclusions and recommendations of the White Paper will help shape wildlife conservation research direction and management planning in this region of international importance to wildlife.