NCCWSC 2009 National Workshop Summary

Changes in the earth’s climate will pose significant challenges to wildlife managers. Adaptive management of fish and wildlife resources will depend on scientific information about climate change at scales useful to managers. Working collaboratively with federal, state, academic, and NGO partners, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) will act as a conduit between science and management by providing natural resource managers with the tools and information they need to develop and execute management strategies that address the impacts of climate change on fish, wildlife, and their habitats.

To help develop the structure of the NCCWSC and partnership mechanisms needed to link climate science and national resource management in the United States, and to provide impetus to the establishment of the NCCWSC, the USGS convened a series of national and regional workshops in 2008-09. These workshops brought together a broad range of stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, tribal organizations academic institutions, and NGOs. A final, national workshop held on July 16 in Arlington, Virginia, engaged representatives from federal and state agencies, tribes, universities, and national NGOs working on climate change or wildlife issues. The purpose of this final workshop was to gather input on the Five-Year Strategy that the USGS is developing for the NCCWSC.