Skip to main content

Helping Southeastern States and Territories Incorporate Climate Change into State Wildlife Action Plans

Spotted Salamander in Dawson County, Georgia. Credit: Alan Cressler

Project Information

Principal Investigator: Hailey Shanovich
Project Start: July 2023
Proposed Project Completion: December 2025
Implements Science Plan Theme:  Species Track
Co-Investigators:
Paul Armstrong (University of Tennessee)

Overview:

State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) serve as the blueprints for conserving wildlife at the state level and are required of US States and Territories to receive funding through the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program administered by USFWS. SWAPs go through major revisions every 10 years, with the next round being due in 2025. The last round of SWAPs in the Southeast generally lacked information on climate change stressors & their impacts to habitats & species. To help fill this gap, Hailey Shanovich, Climate Change and Wildlife Action Fellow with the Southeast CASC, partnered with the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) and the South Central CASC to provide additional capacity and technical support to SWAP coordinators across the region by offer writing additional chapters for southeastern SWAPs focused on providing regional context for threats to wildlife and conservation opportuntites. Working across 11 states and territories, SE CASC asked how to best include climate impacts and resiliency/adaptation actions.

SE CASC offered a menu of options to States and Territories for SWAP climate information:

  1. Overview of climate change in the Southeast and how to interpret climate projections
  2. Custom climate analysis of historical and future climate/seal-level rise projections by ecoregion
  3. Summary of collated climate change vulnerability assessments and niche models for their SGCN
  4. Mini literature review on climate change impacts to a priority taxa of their choosing
  5. Adaptation strategies: resource list and projections for shifting prescribed burn windows

This joint effort by the Southeast CASC, South Central CASC and SECAS to incorporate climate change and adaptation into SWAPs was recognized in 2024 by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies’ Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources in the 2024 Partnership category.