On Tuesday, March 17, 2009, as part of the 74th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, a workshop will be held to examine opportunities to minimize impacts to fish and wildlife resulting from climate change. A workshop at the 73rd North American Conference, in Phoenix, Arizona, in March 2008, identified the potential consequences to fish and wildlife habitats of climate change in the decades ahead. The 74th Conference workshop, to be held at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, takes the issue to its next essential step for resource managers and agencies?planning and actions to contain or mitigate for negative climate change effects.

Climate change presents the single greatest threat ever to fish and wildlife numbers and diversity. North America's land-management agencies, federal, state and provincial, already are beginning to tackle the how, what and where of addressing this threat.

This all-day workshop?Climate Change and Managing Fish and Wildlife?will feature reports from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency. During the morning session, federal agency scientists will elaborate on their planning efforts and objectives. In the afternoon, representatives of state and provincial fish and wildlife agencies that are at the forefront of climate change study will present their ideas and proposed initiatives. There also will be a presentation on private grants to assist state agencies incorporate measures in state wildlife action plans to account for and deal with climate change. Both morning and afternoon sessions will conclude with an open discussion.

The workshop is being coordinated by Douglas Inkley (INKLEY@nwf.org) of the National Wildlife Federation and by John Cooper (jlcoop11@aol.com) on behalf of the Wildlife Management Institute.