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Help Fight Climate Change |
Climate change is a top threat to Florida’s biodiversity – and not in any distant future. Some effects are being seen now.
Abnormally rapid climate change may cause plants and animals to move out of their homes. It could disrupt water flows in streams and rivers. Sea level rise would flood and erode our coasts, with salt water intruding further into our freshwater springs. Today, some of Florida’s most charismatic species – such as the tiny Key deer – are at risk.
Impacts to food and drinking water supplies will continue even if new policies are adopted tomorrow, because Earth’s atmosphere requires decades to respond. Meanwhile, The Nature Conservancy is taking the threat seriously in every decision it makes.
Encouraging Effective Policy
The Conservancy encourages policies that will reduce emission of the gasses that cause global warming; this will help slow the pace and severity of climate change.
Florida staff advocate for state and federal laws that will dramatically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions including a Florida carbon emissions law.
Conservancy staff participated on Gov. Charlie Crist’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change, and joined conservation partners to encourage Florida’s Environmental Regulation Commission to support the adoption of California Motor Vehicle Emissions standards. They also made recommendations to guide future Florida Forever land-buying program purchases.
Helping Florida’s Challenged Species
The Conservancy is working to help natural habitats adjust to the likely effects of climate change.
The Florida chapter’s time-honored conservation work – protecting, restoring and managing the land – is proving to be surprisingly effective in this regard. It helps build healthy systems that adapt in positive ways. New programs are also being designed to emphasize adaptation to climate change.
The following are just a few examples.
In the Water
At Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve, scientists proved they can restore fish movement in freshwater systems. With the removal of Kelley Branch dam, aquatic species can travel throughout the steephead stream and into a diversity of cooler upstream habitats as needed. This allows fish to better adapt to climate change impacts.
In the Florida Keys, staff identified and propagated coral species and coral reefs that are resilient, or able to resist or adapt to stress from the effects of global warming. The Conservancy-led Florida Reef Resilience Program completed its pilot project in 2008 and is now sharing coral reef management strategies around the world.
And in the Gulf of Mexico, the Conservancy will be restoring shellfish reefs to protect coastal marshes from storm erosion and stabilize food sources for juvenile sturgeon. The sturgeon – an ancient fish that migrates into fresh water to spawn – is the “salmon of the South.” A real bellwether to climate, it’s now at the extreme edge of its tolerance.
On the Land
The Conservancy gives special priority to the protection of lands that allow natural adaptation to climate change. Coastline properties with slight elevation changes, such as our Flint Rock tract, allow native species to migrate to higher lands as seas rise or saltwater intrudes.
By protecting the 5,134-acre Hatchineha Ranch, the Conservancy helped connect a huge system of protected conservation lands that serves as the headwaters of the Everglades. This means that species such as the Florida panther have room to roam and adapt to climate change. It helps preserve a wetland system vital to the integrity of south Florida’s water supply.
Keys staff has also begun to work on fire management and hydrologic restoration – filling ditches to prevent native pine forests from transforming into hardwood forests as sea levels rise. Caribbean islands will benefit from the best practices being established now in Florida.
The Threat is Global
Rampant cutting of tropical forests is a major contributor to global warming. Reversing this trend plays a large role in the solution. The Conservancy has been working with a host of partners for more than a decade to conserve tropical forests on a global scale. Together, they create incentives to keep forests standing and replant large tracts that were cleared.
Also on this larger scale, the Conservancy is working to develop and encourage economic and policy tools that will define how the United States and the world address our climate challenge.
Please Join Us
The Conservancy’s cutting-edge scientists are in place, in Florida and across the globe, to reduce the threats of climate change. You can help.
When nature thrives, we thrive.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Larry Lipsky (snorkeler); Photo © Larry Lipsky (Key deer).
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