The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced on September 8 that it was releasing $2 million in funding for fourteen projects that will support the efforts of their Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) throughout the country, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The projects range from climate modeling to predict the responses to climate change by migratory birds to handbooks and training workshops that will outline best management practices for dealing with climate change. The money is part of the $10 million FWS received in fiscal year 2010 to fund adaptive science to help reduce climate change impacts.

"We are living in an era of monumental conservation challenges, including the loss and fragmentation of habitats, genetic isolation, invasive species, unnatural wildfire, water scarcity ?and illegal wildlife trade?all of which will be magnified by the effects of rapidly changing climate," stated U.S. FWS Acting Director Rowan Gould. "Under these circumstances, it is imperative that resource management agencies, conservation organizations and other stakeholders work together to leverage resources and concentrate them where they will do the most good. Landscape conservation cooperatives are an essential step to support that direction."

LCCs are a Department of the Interior effort to organize conservation efforts through strategic, science-based partnerships. Authorized within a February 2010 Secretarial order primarily focused on climate change, the LCCs are intended to coordinate management responses to the broad impacts of climate change on a landscape-level basis. There are 21 geographic areas identified throughout the United States with stakeholders including federal state and local governments, tribes, universities, nongovernmental organizations, landowners and others. The partnerships are intended to complement existing migratory bird joint ventures and fish habitat partnerships within the FWS.

The projects funded this month by the FWS had to be climate-focused, provide new ??information to all or most LCCs, and require only one year of funding to be accomplished. (jas)