Wildlife Refuges and Climate Change

 

Climate Buffer? Large wildlife refuges like the Sheldon can help animals cope with climate change.

 

Wildlife refuges offer important benefits to plants and animals.  Large, landscape-scale habitat can mitigate  the effects of climate change by providing more and better habitat for animals to migrate into.  We’ve written in other places about the need for our new energy economy to be “smart from the start.” This includes renewable energy development that takes into account wildlife corridors and habitats while being as efficient as possible with existing transmission so we don’t unnecessarily spoil what limited habitat remains in the world.

One critical wildlife refuge is the Desert Refuge, an hour north of Vegas, where bighorn corridors link this 1.6 million acre wildlife refuge (the largest in the lower 48) with wilderness areas in a place we call the Delamar Wildlands Complex.  We’re working with developers and energy companies in the area to pursue “smart from the start” by identifying these corridors and planning to ensure what biologists call “permeability”: the opportunity to move through powerlines, highways, etc.  There’s a way to do it; we just have to acknowledge that it is the right and necessary thing to do, and go find the partnerships and resources to execute.

Another incredible example of a large landscape harboring sensitive species is in northwestern Nevada, where the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge links up with the Hart National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon for a massive unfragmented habitat of more than a million acres (including wilderness study areas and other lands in the region).  The Sheldon is one of a number of corridor regions we’ve identified in Nevada because of the antelope and sage grouse habitat, and its importance to combatting the ills of climate change.  We’re part of an informal working group called the Sheldon Network, a gaggle of groups ranging from the Sierra Club to Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, who have worked hard in recent months to highlight the Sheldon and its importance.  The Sheldon Network is being spearheaded by our coalition partners over at Friends of Nevada Wilderness and they recently led 60 folks from a number of great groups to the Sheldon to remove old cattle fencing (that can impede movement of prohorn and other species).  Check out how they’re making the Sheldon wilder by clicking on their name and read about a very successful trip to rewild the refuge.