State Wildlife Action Plans

Sign-On Letter Text

Dear Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

As leading members of the 5,700 organization strong Teaming with Wildlife Coalition, we urge you to support strong state fish and wildlife adaptation funding in the Lieberman-Warner “America’s Climate Security Act” (S.2191). By providing funding to every state and territory through the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program, this bill will help ensure that state fish and wildlife agencies and their partners have the resources needed to conserve wildlife and vital natural areas for future generations.

In response to a charge from Congress, the state fish and wildlife agencies and their many conservation partners have worked together to complete wildlife action plans for every state and territory. As a coalition of conservation organizations, wildlife management professionals, outdoor enthusiasts, and other supporters of fish and wildlife conservation, we’ve seen the tangible benefits of these plans in the communities where we live and work. Unfortunately, The landscape-level effects of climate change, including alteration of habitat, disruption to migratory patterns, changes in predator-prey interactions and the spread of invasive species are already placing greater stresses on fish and wildlife, eroding some of these recent gains.

Funding from America’s sportsmen and women has helped state fish and wildlife agencies manage fish and wildlife in a changing landscape for more than a century, but the pressures of climate change will dramatically increase the need for proactive actions to conserve fish, wildlife and their habitat. By allocating funds to the Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Program, the Lieberman-Warner bill recognizes that state fish and wildlife agencies are the primary managers of fish and wildlife resources in the United States and ensures that funds go to every state.

The wildlife action plans, along with other landscape-scale conservation initiatives under development, provide a strategic platform for promptly delivering funding for on-the-ground projects to help fish and wildlife react to the challenge of climate change. Organizations like ours are eager to help, but we’re counting on funding from federal climate change legislation to help us put these plans into action.

Please join us in recognizing fish and wildlife conservation funding as an indispensable component of climate change legislation. With your help, we can take proactive actions to prevent wildlife from becoming endangered as the impacts of climate change hit home.

Sincerely,

NAME, TITLE
ORGANIZATION (STATE)

Click here for more information on wildlife funding in climate legislation.