A warming climate is poised to change the environments that Michigan’s beloved wildlife has grown used to.
Models show air temperature will steadily increase. Precipitation is increasing, too, although it tends to dump in heavier volumes of rain and snow in the winter and spring, leaving summers dry, said Dana Infante, a river ecologist and professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.
The changes are “having a variety of our effects on our wildlife, our fish and our agriculture,” she said.
The people in charge of managing wildlife have to figure out how to adapt as the climate changes. But first, they need to know what the public is willing to support.
The Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, an arm of the U.S. Geological Survey, is launching a survey this year to gauge what Midwesterners know about climate change and what adaptation strategies they support.
There are a few strategies the survey team could ask about, said David Fulton, an assistant unit leader of the United States Geological Survey Minnesota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and head of the survey team. They include:
- Stocking different species of fish that will survive in warmer streams and lakes, since climate change is fueling rising temperatures in waterways
- Buying land around streams so that it will be conserved and not developed, since paved and developed land causes more runoff that can pollute and warm streams
- Building larger culverts that can flush more water under roads when heavy rainfall makes streams rise
The survey also will collect information about how people respond to different descriptions of the benefits of those strategies, which could help wildlife officials explain their future climate adaptation programs.
Planning for climate change is increasingly important as temperatures warm, Fulton said.
Average temperatures in the Great Lakes region already have increased by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1951. They are expected to rise 3-6 degrees by 2050 and 6-11 degrees by 2100, according to the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments, a collaboration between the University of Michigan, MSU, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Surveyors plan to get 1,000 people in each Midwestern state to respond to their questions. The eight states are Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota.
Fulton expects it will be fall 2024 before they release information from the survey. He said it likely will take nine months to kick off the survey, about a month to collect answers over the web and another four to six months to analyze the information.
It is important for natural resources officials to understand what climate adaptation projects people support, Infante said.
“Ultimately, it’s going to matter what they prioritize,” she said. “Will it be the same fish assemblages or wildlife we’ve always had? Or are they willing to accept the changes that would happen under a changing climate?”
“One hundred percent, we need to know what people think.”
ckthompson@detroitnews.com
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