Developing a novel, frontline adaptation program in Alaska that sustains biodiversity in a rapidly changing climate.

The situation…

Alaska's climate is warming at 3-4 times the rate of the Lower 48. Glaciers are receding, sea ice is disappearing, sea levels are rising, permafrost is thawing, wildfire is becoming more extreme, and marine and nonglacial waters are warming.

Wildlife and plants are responding, too, generally moving northward in latitude and upward in elevation. Fisher are colonizing southeast Alaska from British Columbia even as white-tailed deer and mule deer, two other species once constrained to Canada, now have a harvest season in Alaska. Rufous and Anna's hummingbirds, two bird species which historically did not occur in Alaska, now winter on the Kenai Peninsula! Moose are increasing in abundance and distribution on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a response to expanding shrubs and lightning-caused wildfire in just the past two decades. Beaver and cottonwood have begun colonizing the North Slope (early harbingers of a boreal system re-creating itself north of the Brooks Range), displacing conspicuously white species such as snowy owls, arctic foxes and polar bears that are quickly losing their historic ranges in Alaska.

These are success stories - the Alaskan species capable of adapting on their own to rapidly changing conditions. We support land conservation efforts to maintain connectivity at different spatial scales that will allow natural adaptation for those who can.

Unfortunately, most species simply cannot respond as quickly, leaving them to flounder in habitats increasingly out of sync with their needs, a process that will ultimately lead to extinctions, novel assemblages, and degraded ecosystems. Compounding this problem is that more than 560 nonnative plant and animal species have already been introduced by humans to Alaska, many of which are invasive and will likely outcompete our native biota in the reshuffling of species distributions. Setting aside more conservation lands and continuing conventional single-species management will not change these dire outcomes.

Consequently, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance not only supports traditional land conservation as a means to conserve our biodiversity, we also promote novel management approaches that facilitate adaptation to rapid ecological transformations.

OUR APPROACH

Alaska Wildlife Alliance has contributed to development of the Resist, Accept, Direct (RAD) framework, which lays out three choices for communities and agencies to guide their climate adaptation planning.  In contrast to other climate adaptation approaches (e.g., Climate-Smart, Open Standards, Scenario Planning or Structured Decision Making) that are open-ended, RAD carves up the decision space into three action-oriented bins.  The 2021 revision of the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy has endorsed RAD as a progressive approach. The National Park Service is also promoting RAD as a “framework that encourages natural resource managers to consider strategic, forward-looking actions, rather than structure management goals based on past conditions.”

Here is a quick video on how RAD framework works and how it applies in a changing global environment.

When we Resist, our interventions are intended to maintain ecosystems in their current state or restore to a historical state. For example, on the Kenai Peninsula in southcentral Alaska, land managers resist climate warming and extreme weather events by restoring eroded stream banks, eradicating or containing invasive plant species such as Elodea or bird vetch, proactively allowing wildfire to run by creating fuel breaks around communities, and restoring landscape connectivity for wildlife with highway over- and under-passes.

When we Accept, we embrace changes that cannot be feasibly resisted or directed, or that may be acceptable to society. For example, communities and agencies on the Kenai Peninsula have implicitly accepted ecological changes brought about by a warming and drying climate by simply monitoring (not managing) receding glaciers, rising tree lines, drying wetlands, and naturalized invasive species such as earthworms and common dandelions.

When we Direct, our interventions are intended to guide ecosystems along the climate trajectory, perhaps because resistance is unrealistic or there is an opportunity to move toward a desirable future state. For example, after massive tree mortality brought about by an unprecedented 15-year spruce bark beetle outbreak coupled with spring grassland wildfires, some spruce forests on the southern Kenai Peninsula are transforming into a novel monoculture of bluejoint grass with relatively low species richness.  In response, some land managers have planted nonnative lodgepole pine to replace spruce, while others are considering introducing a large grazer, like bison, to help create a more diverse grassland.

Our strategies

Inform Alaskan public policy to recognize climate change and ensure that it is considered in all wildlife and habitat decisions

• Create and coordinate alliance-based working groups to spearhead this strategy, “cross pollinate” ideas, and build public support and consensus;

• Advocate for climate change models to be considered in all state wildlife management policies, plans, and working groups. See our 2022 Climate Workshop;

• Educate decision makers on climate change impacts to wildlife, ecosystem health, biodiversity, and environmental justice.

Collaboratively develop innovative climate adaptation plans across Alaska that are founded in ecosystem management

• Promote decision frameworks that demand ecosystem and landscape-scaled context in the development of community adaptation plans;

• Promote field experiments to validate modeled ecological trajectories before they happen;

• Build alliances to facilitate the development of pilot studies that demonstrate climate change adaptation approaches. Pilot studies showcase novel ways of solving a management problem, demonstrating ecological and economic feasibility before scaling up.

In the news

• New York Times, What to Save? Climate Change Forces Brutal Choices at National Parks by Zoe Schlanger. The Resist-Accept-Direct framework cited in the article was co-authored by AWA’s Vice President, Dr. John Morton.

• The Economist, How Alaska is coping with global warming. Highlight on Dr. John Morton, AWA’s Vice President.

• Yale Environment 360, As Warming Alters Alaska, Can a Key Wildlife Refuge Adapt? by Miranda Weiss. Highlight on Dr. John Morton, AWA’s Vice President.

Recent work and publications

In partnership with the Native Village of Paimiut and the Intertribal Environmental Consortium, AWA is helping build a future for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s most vulnerable species and communities

Alaska Wildlife Alliance is a also co-author on the following publications:

Seasonal sonic patterns reveal phenological phases (sonophases) associated with climate change in subarctic Alaska, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2024. Mullet, T.C., A. Farina , J.M. Morton and S.R. Wilhelm. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2024.1345558.

A RADical approach to conservation in Alaska, The Wildlife Professional, 2022. Littell, J, GW Schuurman, JH Reynolds, JM Morton & N Schmitt. 16(4):26-30.

RAD fosters a new way of responding to climate change on the Kenai Peninsula, The Wildlife Professional, 2022. Thompson, LM, JM Morton, DR Magness, JL Wilkening, RA Newman & EA Beever. 16(4):31-33.

Managing for RADical ecosystem change: applying the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2021. Lynch, AJ, LM Thompson, EA Beever, AC Engman, CH Hoffmann, J Falke, ST Jackson, TJ Krabbenhoft, DJ Lawrence, D Limpinsel, RT Magill, TA Melvin, JM Morton, RA Newman, JO Peterson, MT Porath, FJ Rahel, GW Schuurman, SA Sethi & JL Wilkening. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2377.

Responding to Ecosystem Transformation: Resist, Accept, or Direct?, Fisheries, 2021. Thompson, LM, AJ Lynch, EA Beever, DN Cole, AC Engman, J Falke, ST Jackson, TJ Krabbenhoft, DJ Lawrence, D Limpinsel, RT Magill, TA Melvin, JM Morton, RA Newman, JO Peterson, MT Porath, FJ Rahel, SA Sethi & JL Wilkening. https://doi.org/10.1002/fsh.10506.

Managing Foundations for Navigating Ecological Transformation by Resisting, Accepting, or Directing Social-Ecological Change, BioScience, 2021. Dawn R Magness, Linh Hoang, R Travis Belote, Jean Brennan, Wylie Carr, F Stuart Chapin, III, Katherine Clifford, Wendy Morrison, John M Morton, Helen R Sofaer. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab083.

Navigating Ecological Transformation: Resist–Accept–Direct as a Path to a New Resource Management Paradigm, BioScience, 2021. Gregor W Schuurman, David N Cole, Amanda E Cravens, Scott Covington, Shelley D Crausbay, Cat Hawkins Hoffman, David J Lawrence, Dawn R Magness, John M Morton, Elizabeth A Nelson, Robin O'Malley. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab067

RAD Adaptive Management for Transforming Ecosystems, BioScience, 2021. Abigail J Lynch, Laura M Thompson, John M Morton, Erik A Beever, Michael Clifford, Douglas Limpinsel, Robert T Magill, Dawn R Magness, Tracy A Melvin, Robert A Newman, Mark T Porath, Frank J Rahel, Joel H Reynolds, Gregor W Schuurman, Suresh A Sethi, Jennifer L Wilkening.https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab091.

Resist-accept-direct (RAD)— a framework for the 21st-century natural resource manager, Natural Resource Report NPS/NRSS/CCRP/NRR—2020/ 2213. Schuurman, G. W., C. Hawkins Hoffman, D. N. Cole, D. J. Lawrence, J. M. Morton, D. R. Magness, A. E. Cravens, S. Covington, R. O’Malley, and N. A. Fisichelli. 2020. National Park Service, Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/nrr-2283597.

Alaska Wildlife Alliance. 2022. Approaches to adapting to Alaska’s rapidly warming climate: Workshop report. Workshop held virtually February 23-25, 2022. https://www.akwildlife.org/workshop