Every 10 years, state fish and wildlife management agencies must comprehensively review, and if necessary revise, their State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs). These are important planning documents that serve as blueprints for conserving fish, wildlife, and their habitat, and for preventing species listings in each state. These plans focus on species that have been identified as being of greatest conservation need, but also address the full array of wildlife and wildlife-related issues in a state. States last reviewed and revised their SWAPs in 2015, and will do so again in 2025.
In 2016-2017, the Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) synthesized the 14 SWAP reports from the Northeast region. Their report synthesized a range of threats to wildlife, including climate change, but because of the scope of the project, did not include important details on climate change threats. Building off of the NEAFWA effort, the goal of this project is to identify, synthesize, and prioritize climate change threats and associated adaptation actions for species identified in the 2015 SWAPs as being Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need. The project team will also explore how existing tools, such as those developed by the Northeast CASC, can best be implemented by management agencies to help meet their science needs.
Resource managers in the Northeast have requested syntheses of existing information on climate change and the identification of adaptation actions, and this project will support coordinated regional conservation and adaptation. The results of this project will support states in identifying specific climate impacts to fish, wildlife, and habitats that they can incorporate into their SWAPs during the next revision phase, as well as adaptation strategies that states can start implementing across local and large-landscape scales.
