Climate Smart Conservation: How National Parks Plan for a Hotter, Drier Future

Image from the National Park Service's page.

Plants and animals in the national parks of the U.S. Southwest are adapted to arid conditions, but even desert dwellers have limits. The Park Service reports that entire pinyon-juniper forests have been killed by bark beetles and others by drought, that wildland fires and floods are more severe, that snowpack is declining and erosion increasing, and that projections of a hotter, drier future suggest more change is coming.

Rethinking how parks plan

The National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for conserving park wildlife, scenery and natural objects. For many years that was taken to mean managing park landscapes to look as they did at some point in the distant past. Objectives have since evolved, and even in the most remote wilderness parks the ecological conditions that shaped the landscapes parks protect often no longer exist. Under a changing climate, options range from working to keep a historical or current state, to accepting change, to directing a complete ecosystem transformation. The decisions can be scientifically challenging and emotionally agonizing.

Many park staff are turning to Climate Smart Conservation, a process for identifying actions that help managers reach their goals despite coming changes. Scientists and managers together think through the climate impacts on park resources, use scientific data to analyze different situations, and then identify and evaluate the management options most likely to be feasible, achievable and effective given what a park can do. The point is to anticipate problems and be proactive rather than reactive, and the process breaks big, complex questions into bite-sized chunks.

How it works

The process is iterative and uses adaptive management, an approach familiar to planners, scientists and decision makers. Because nobody can predict exactly how much the climate will warm, more than one plausible set of future conditions is considered at several stages.

American pikas, with their specific environmental requirements, are highly vulnerable to climate change. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Why plan ahead

Intentional planning helps managers anticipate, and avoid, surprises. The article's examples: if drought is expected, thin forests now to reduce the chance of severe wildfire later; if water rights may be threatened, start negotiating now; if an important species may not persist, identify another native species that could fill its role in the ecosystem. Knowing that plants and animals may feel stress before they actually experience it lets managers act to help them linger.

Skipping these questions ahead of time raises the likelihood of undesirable outcomes, such as uncontrolled invasions of noxious weeds, loss of ecosystem structure and function as vegetation transitions unfold, and hydrologic changes that affect both aquatic species and people. In short, an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure.

Knowing which actions to take now can help reduce the likelihood of severe effects later. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Where it is used

Climate Smart Conservation does not provide all the answers, because not all of them are knowable, and neither scientists nor managers can complete it alone. It does help managers focus resources and attention on the actions that can provide the most benefit.

After workshops hosted by the Northern Colorado Plateau Network, parks in the NPS Southeast Utah Group are working with U.S. Geological Survey scientists to restore and conserve grasslands and pinyon-juniper forests. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a consortium of federal agencies is working on aquatic resource conservation and whitebark pine conservation. Existing projects are reconfigured to take in new knowledge of climate stressors, often with new science, so that actions hold up across a range of plausible futures. Since the first workshop, in Moab, Utah, in 2016, the NPS Inventory & Monitoring Division has hosted more in parks across the West.

Field technicians examine mature cones of a whitebark pine tree. NPS/Erin Shanahan.

Climate change is shuffling the deck for park ecosystems, gradually in some cases and abruptly in others. Keeping them healthy will take proactive planning and the difficult acceptance that it may not be possible to save everything. What scientists and managers can do is work together to assist park species where it is wise to do so, or to slow the rate of change.

Sources

• National Park Service, Climate Smart Conservation Planning for the National Parks; the article's flow chart, adapted from a National Wildlife Federation graphic, is not reproduced and its stages are in the table; the article points to the National Wildlife Federation's Climate Smart Conservation page and the Park Service's Climate Change Response Program; rewritten in hubnx's own words.