Join us virtually on April 9 for our last Wildlife Wednesday of the season! AWA’s Vice President John Morton will be presenting:

Thinking Like a Spruce: The case for helping species move in a rapidly warming climate 

In response to a warming climate, species generally move northward in latitude and upward in elevation. Nowhere is this more true than in Alaska, where the climate is warming at 2 to 4 times the global average. But species move at different rates, setting the stage for novel species assemblages in the best case or extinction in the worst. We can minimize the worst of this if we are willing to give species a helping hand, translocating them to places they can’t reach fast enough (or at all) that are developing suitable climates.

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John worked as a wildlife biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service for 32 years in Alaska, California, Guam, Maryland, and Wisconsin. Before his retirement, he worked as the supervisory biologist at Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, where he focused on novel approaches to monitoring biodiversity and adapting to a rapidly warming climate.