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The Endangered Species Act can play a significant role in conserving U.S. wildlife threatened by global warming.

When Congress enacted the Act in 1973 and amended the statute in the 1970s and 1980s, lawmakers did not see global warming as a significant threat to wildlife. However, policymakers designed the law to address all threats to wildlife, no matter what their origin. Thus, no radical changes to the law are needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act addresses the effects of global warming. On the other hand, climate change greatly increases extinction risks of species already imperiled for other reasons and thereby greatly reduces the margin for error in implementing the Act's protections and recovery programs. Policymakers therefore will need to consider significantly strengthening Endangered Species Act programs--as well as increasing Endangered Species Act funding--to help fulfill the nation's commitment to conserve abundant wildlife and healthy ecosystems for future generations.

The fate of wildlife and ecosystems hinges on the willingness and ability of policymakers and natural resource managers to confront global warming-related threats. Natural resource managers will need to become much more conversant in integrating climate models and other considerations of climate change into Endangered Species Act implementation, and policymakers will need to provide direction and funding to facilitate this integration. To maximize the chances that the Act will meet its conservation goals, agencies implementing the law must confront global warming head-on. 

Related Resources

• Conserving Endangered Species in an Era of Global Warming by John Kostyack and Dan Rohlf (pdf) - While the Endangered Species Act is lauded as one of the country's most powerful tools of environmental protection, the statute may not be strong enough to protect wildlife and habitat in the face of global warming. In this article, John Kostyack and Dan Rohlf argue that legislative and administrative changes will be needed if the Endangered Species Act is going to make a real difference in protecting biodiversity from the dangers of climate change. They describe the effects that climate change will have on wildlife and habitat, and relay a list of potential management responses to these effects. They then discuss implementation challenges that climate change will bring, such as difficulties in designating critical habitat for wildlife moving due to warming. Finally, the authors conclude with some policy recommendations, including how to tackle climate change legislation, update the Act, and institute adaptive management practices.