This week the Obama administration showed off its new strategy for protecting America’s flora and fauna from climate change. Said David Hayes, Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior:
Fish and wildlife or plants, our land, our habitat, is not just something we feel good about because we like nature, but in fact they’re providing a lot of services to us – jobs, recreational opportunities, we’re seeing that they provide wonderful protection from storm surges, that the wetlands are filtering our water, providing clean water.
The plan is called “The National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy.” It incorporates seven key ideas, and it is incredibly vague. To be fair, it’s not exactly a to-do list; it’s more a learned set of general recommendations for the future. For example! Goal number six is to “Increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants in a changing climate.” But the plan has no authority to actually do those things; it just suggests that they’d be a good idea.
Other items on the agenda include “Conserve habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife, and plant populations and ecosystem functions in a changing climate,” which, okay, that means very little, and “Increase knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, wildlife, and plants to a changing climate,” which means about the same amount. But, this is important; we’re just guessing at how climate change will affect our wildlife, but as we learned from the story of America’s rarest turtle, it’s vital that we do figure it out, and quickly.
[via Nature World News]