From the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific coast and Alaska, the landscapes we call home include mountains, deserts, rivers, freshwater wetlands, coastal areas, and oceans. The nation’s natural bounty is ecologically diverse, culturally significant, and economically essential.
But rising seas, increasingly extreme disasters—storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires—and a dwindling variety and number of species threaten nature as well as people’s lives and livelihoods. To thrive in the face of these challenges, communities and ecosystems must become more resilient.
Pew’s U.S. conservation project advances plans and policies that account for the impacts of ongoing climate change while building a stronger and more adaptable environment for people and nature. These climate-ready approaches can advance conservation and improve the way Americans live.
To achieve its goals, Pew relies on science, research, and a diverse group of partners, including nongovernmental organizations; scientists; community groups; Indigenous peoples; businesses; and local, state, and federal decision-makers and leaders. Together, we responsibly steward natural resources and pursue policies that can create durable communities now and for future generations.
In this episode of “After the Fact,” Pew’s Matt Skroch describes how wildlife road crossings work. And Michael Dax, western program director at the Wildlands Network, along with Patricia Cramer, founder, Wildlife Connectivity Institute, discuss how wildlife managers, transportation officials, and other groups are teaming up to build these crossings.
Businesses, communities, and wildlife across a vast portion of western Washington, western Oregon, and northwestern California rely on healthy national forests. Since 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) has guided conservation, recreation, timber production, and other uses of these 19.2 million acres of species-rich and economically important lands and rivers, and now, as it does periodically, the U.S. Forest Service is updating the NWFP.
For U.S. communities, preparing for and adapting to the threat of flooding, wildfire, drought, and other disasters is essential now more than ever. But it’s nearly impossible without sufficient staffing, technical expertise, funding, and other resources. That’s why communities hardest hit by repeated disasters often cite a lack of capacity—to plan, fund, and implement programs and projects needed to reduce risk—as a top barrier to building resilience to extreme weather events.
The historic, devastating wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area in January—destroying homes, communities, businesses, and lives—have once again elevated the need for state lawmakers and government officials throughout the country to help their jurisdictions become more resilient to disasters.
Rising costs and threats from extreme weather in the U.S. have prompted historic government investments in hazard mitigation and disaster resilience—including more than $50 billion cumulatively from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
