DFW completes work to update NMI’s Wildlife Action Plan

Revised just two years ago, the Division of Fish & Wildlife Action Plan discusses climate change impacts to our wildlife, lands, and waters that were not considered in the last decade.

Jill Liske-Clark, who developed the WAP for the CNMI for years 2015 to 2025, noted that in December 2015, DFW completed the nearly two-year project to revise and update the CNMI Wildlife Action Plan, which was last completed in 2005.

“Given the range and magnitude of the impacts that climate change will bring in coming decades, we need to explicitly evaluate and articulate the expected impacts on populations and habitats,” she said.

Climate change factors within the plan notes that while the average global temperature has increased, other effects on climate are more variable, since the changes have a global impact, with many effects known or currently anticipated.

“For example, we anticipate that marine and terrestrial food webs will be altered in coming decades, and the threat of altered prey or forage availability will be an effect of climate change…At this time, we cannot predict how the forest will change, and which Species of Greatest Conservation Need or SGCN may benefit or be harmed,” Liske-Clark said.

According to Lands and Natural Resources Secretary Anthony Benavente, although the WAP does not include a comprehensive list of all effects of climate change, or even all effects expected to impact our SGCN, adaptation and mitigation is needed.

“What we can see is that the most important climate change effects that will impact our SGCN will occur or intensify in the coming decades and that current data suggests that our marine SGCN are at greater risk from the effects of climate change such as ocean acidification or increased typhoon activity,” Benavente said.

One of these effects, according to the WAP, is ocean acidification, which negatively affects the growth and reproduction of corals and other marine life.

Gov. Ralph DLG Torres, who led the Climate Adaptation Directive to establish a Climate Change Resilience Working Group, said that the effects of ocean acidification on reef building corals could result in major alterations of entire reef ecosystems.

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most recent study of our archipelago shows coral bleaching happening in areas that lack human activity. Although we cannot predict the rate of species impacts, we can predict that climate change will deeply affect our surrounding waters and marine life,” Torres said.

The WAP further describes sea level rise and the costly effects on coastal human communities as well as altered precipitation patterns.

Sea level rise could be expected to impact shorelines, causing erosion in some and accretion in others.

“Beaches, possibly including those in the CNMI that are particularly important to tourism and sea turtle nesting, could be significantly impacted. Mangroves, an extremely limited habitat in the CNMI found only on Saipan, may be eroded, inundated by seawater, and/or converted to other habitat types, threatening the persistence of the SGCN mangrove crab,” Liske-Clark said.

With climate change resiliency as one of many factors in conservation efforts, the WAP lays out a 10-year strategy for proactive conservation and management of the CNMI’s fish and wildlife resources.

For more information on the Division of Fish and Wildlife Action Plan, log onto gov.mp/2017/07/31/cnmi-wildlife-action-plan/. (PR)