Federal Agencies Need to Prepare for Climate Change, Report Says

Agencies that oversee millions of acres of federal land and water resources aren't doing enough to prepare for the future impact of climate change, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The report, developed after more than a year of on-site visits, discussions and workshops with scientists, federal officials and other experts, concludes that the U.S. Agriculture, Commerce and Interior department secretaries should create plans that advise managers how to best address the effects of climate change on the resources under their control and how to gather the critical information they need to do so.

"Climate change has already begun to adversely affect federal resources in a variety of ways," the multi-author report stated. "Most experts with whom we spoke believe that these effects will continue -- and likely intensify -- over the coming decades. Some federal resources, depending on a variety of factors, may be more vulnerable than others. Because this issue is long term, global, and may affect federal resources in a number of ways, it will require foresight on the part of federal agencies to prepare for and minimize the adverse effects of climate change. However, federal resource management agencies have not yet made climate change a high priority."

More than 600 million acres of land -- nearly 30 percent of the U.S. land area -- and 150,000-plus square miles of protected waters fall under federal control. Agencies responsible for these resources include the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.

GAO investigators compiled information for the report between May 2006 and July of this year, conducting workshop discussions with 54 scientists, economists and federal resource managers. They also conducted on-site visits to develop case studies for the four key ecosystems found on federal lands: coasts and oceans, forests, fresh water ecosystems and grasslands/shrublands. Specific sites used for those case studies included the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in south Florida, the Chugach National Forest in south-central Alaska, Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana and the BLM Kingman Field Office in northwestern Arizona.

In each case, the GAO found that sites are already feeling the effects of climate change.

At Big Pine Key in the Florida Keys, for example, rising sea levels are causing saltwater intrusion into land, reducing the amount of freshwater available to sustain native creatures like the Key deer and the Lower Key marsh rabbit. Meanwhile, drought and invasive species are fueling fires and changing the native ecosystem in Arizona, and warmer temperature and reduced precipitation are driving outbreaks of spruce bark beetles in the Chugach National Forest, causing high tree mortality rates across more than 400,000 acres of the park. And Glacier National Park has seen its number of glaciers dwindle from 150 in 1850 to 26 today.

"Both summer and winter temperatures are increasing in the park and some projections suggest that if current trends in the rate of melting continue, the remaining glaciers will be gone in the next 25 to 30 years," the GAO report stated.

Managers at the sites said they are uncertain how to best address the changes they are seeing, and that day-to-day responsibilities often make it difficult to prepare for long-term impacts. The GAO report concluded that the top officials at federal land and water agencies need to make climate-change preparations a priority and better communicate that need to managers in the field.

"Because there is growing evidence that climate change is likely to have wide-ranging consequences for the nation's land and water resources, elevating the importance of the issue in their respective strategies and plans would enable (land and water agencies) to provide effective long-term stewardship of the resources under their purview," the report's authors concluded.

Government Accountability Office, "Agencies Should Develop Guidance for Addressing the Effects on Federal Land and Water Resources." URL: (http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-863)