Workshop Purpose

Wildlife managers face the growing challenge of helping wildlife populations and ecosystems respond to climate change. This highly interactive workshop will help staff from the Michigan DNR Wildlife Division consider climate change and develop custom-built adaptation actions into their own real-world projects.

Outcomes

Participants in this workshop will be able to: 1) Describe regional and local climate change impacts on focal wildlife species and habitats, 2) Develop specific adaptation actions to help wildlife adapt to changing conditions, and 3) Become familiar with an adaptation planning process that can be applied to a variety of future needs.

Workshop Preparation

This workshop will follow the Adaptation Planning and Practices curriculum (link below), which will provide a mix of group work time and large-group discussion and activity over the course of the workshop. Small groups will be responsible to bring a real-world management project to consider at the workshop. Each project group will submit their wildlife management goals and objectives to workshop organizers prior to the workshop. There will be at least two pre-workshop meetings (December 19, 2023 and January 30, 2024) to cover background information on the Adaptation Workbook process and climate change impacts on wildlife. Workshop organizers will provide guidance on selecting projects and expressing goals and objectives at these meetings.