WCS 3-Sentence Science

Helping Wildlife Prepare for a Warming Planet

June 21, 2019

Credit: WCS Climate Adaptation Fund

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present work by WCS’s James Watson on the importance of identifying habitats resilient to climate change:

1. A team of researchers identified priorities for securing potential sites where wildlife can take refuge as areas of habitat become climatically unsuitable.
2. They developed and compared two planning scenarios: one that that permits both the retention of high quality habitat and the restoration of land used for forestry and agriculture; and a scenario that favors the retention of high quality habitat above land restoration efforts.
3. The results of the study provide immediate guidance for on-ground management actions, and provides a robust methodology that can support climate change adaptation decisions in multi-use landscapes around the world.

Study and Journal: “Retention and restoration priorities for climate adaptation in a multi-use landscape” from Global Ecology and Conservation
WCS Co-Author(s): James Watson , Director WCS Science and Research Initiative

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.