Dear PNW Tribal Climate Change Network:
Following please find a series of updates from partners about upcoming events and webinars. Our next PNW Tribal Climate Change Network call is scheduled for Wednesday, June 26th at 10 am Pacific. If you have any items you would like to include on the agenda, please let me know. I will send out a draft agenda and call-in information the week of June 17th.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions or updates that you would like to share with the network.
Best regards,
Kathy
**UPDATES**
National Fish Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, and the DOI Adaptive Management & Applications Guides
Via Sean Hart, Bureau of Indian Affairs
Over the next two weeks the USGS is mailing out (to all 566 Tribes) hard copies of the National Fish Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, and the Department of Interior (DOI) Adaptive Management and Applications Guides. Since this is going as a Dear Tribal Leader mailing interested Tribal staff may want to watch the Chairman's in-box. This was a cooperative effort. The Fish and Wildlife Service paid for the printing, the USGS paid for the mailing and agreed to stuff the envelopes, and the DOI policy people coordinated the effort and got all the signatures. All the documents are available on the web, but we felt that a hard copy would help overloaded tribal staff.
Conference: SAVE THE DATE: 5-6 SEPTEMBER 2013 for PNW Climate Science Conference
The 4th annual Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference will be held in Portland 5-6 September 2013. The conference provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to convene and exchange scientific results, challenges, and solutions related to the impacts of climate on people, natural resources, and infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest. The conference attracts a wide range of participants including policy- and decision-makers, resource managers, and scientists, from public agencies, sovereign tribal nations, non-governmental organizations, and more. As such, the conference emphasizes oral presentations that are comprehensible to a wide audience and on topics of broad interest. This conference is an opportunity to stimulate and showcase decision-relevant climate science in the Pacific Northwest. Previous conferences were held in Portland in 2010, Seattle in 2011, and Boise in 2012. This conference will feature a keynote address by US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and invited plenary talks by several other distinguished speakers. The conference will transcend the typical, discipline-based science conference to stimulate and develop a place-based understanding of the connections between climate and decisions that affect the people and resources in the region. We seek presentations, either oral or poster, that describe the region’s climate variability and change over time; connections between climate and forest, water, fish, and wildlife resources; climate-related natural hazards such as wildfire, drought, flooding, invasive species and shoreline change; and the emerging science of ocean acidification. We also seek case studies of efforts to incorporate science into planning, policy, and resource management programs and decisions; new approaches to data mining or data development; decision support tools and services related to climate adaptation; and fresh approaches or new understanding of the challenges of communicating climate science. We invite you to suggest or organize a cluster of abstracts around a theme that might be used to design a special session. Abstract submission is now open. Registration and lodging information will be available soon. See http://pnwclimateconference.org/
Webinars: ITEP Tribal Climate Change Webinar Series
The Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) is hosting a Tribal Climate Change Webinar Series that will provide basic information about climate change, its impacts on tribes in the United States, and outreach and education material and resources that tribes can use with their communities to increase their awareness and understanding of climate change. Registration will be limited to a maximum of 100 participants per webinar. Go to: http://www4.nau.edu/itep/climatechange/tcc_webinars.asp to register. ITEP will send you information about how to log on to the webinar.
Webinar 1: Climate Change-What it is and why it's important
Thursday, June 13, 2013—10:00-11:15 am Pacific
Maybe you’ve been hearing a lot about climate change, adaptation and mitigation, but you don’t feel like you know the basics. This presentation will review climate change terminology and go over the basics of climate change and why climate change is an important issue for everyone-- think "Climate Change 101." Presenter: Zack Guido, Associate Staff Scientist, Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS), University of Arizona
Webinar 2: Indicators of Climate Change
Tuesday, June 18, 2013—10:00-11:15 am Pacific
One way to track and communicate the causes and effects of climate change is through the use of indicators. An indicator, such as a record of sea ice extent, represents the state or trend of certain environmental conditions over a given area and a specified time period. This presentation will provide an overview of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Change Indicators in the United States, 2012 report, which presents a set of 26 indicators tracking observed signs of climate change in the United States. Presenter: Lesley Jantarasami and Mike Kolian, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Air and Radiation, Climate Change Division
Webinar 3: Climate Change Impacts on Tribes
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:00-12:15 pm Pacific
Climate change is and will impact the peoples, lands and resources of indigenous communities. This presentation will provide an overview of climate change impacts and vulnerabilities of tribes in the United States. It will draw on the findings from the draft 2013 National Climate Assessment's (NCA) chapter on tribes, Impacts of Climate Change on Tribal, Indigenous, and Native Lands and Resources. The draft 2013 NCA has been going through the review process and is available at: http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/; the final report is expected to be available by early 2014. The co-presenters are members of the tribal chapter's author team. Co-Presenters: Bull Bennett, President, Kiksapa Consulting; Nancy Maynard, Emeritus Scientist, NASA; Patricia Cochran, Executive Director, Alaska Native Science Commission; Kathy Lynn, Project Coordinator, PNW Tribal Climate Change Project, University of Oregon; and Sue Wotkyns, Climate Change Program Manager, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, Northern Arizona University
Webinar 4: Climate Change Outreach and Education
Friday, July 12, 2013—11:00 am-12:15 pm Pacific
Does your tribal community have little knowledge and understanding of climate change and its impacts? Are you trying to increase their awareness about climate change and ways to address it, such as mitigation and adaptation? This presentation will provide information about outreach and education material and resources that tribes can use in engaging their tribal community about climate change. It will include examples from the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals’ Environmental Education and Outreach Program. Presenter: Mansel Nelson, Program Coordinator, Environmental Education and Outreach Program, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, Northern Arizona University
Webinar: Linking Into the Future: A Conservation Plan for the Purcell, Selkirk and Monashee Ranges of Southern BC
Jun 12, 2013 at 12:00-1:00 pm Mountain Time
Climate change is projected to have significant impacts on most species in the coming decades. This webinar will provide an overview of conservation planning tools and methodologies developed for use by a collaborative group in response to these challenges. The primary purpose of this project is to identify additional conservation lands and management strategies that may be required to meet biological conservation goals in the Columbia Basin and southern Rockies. Hosts: Great Northern LCC and Conservation Northwest. Presenter: Greg Utzig, Project Science Coordinator, Kutenai Nature Investigations Ltd.
Article: A Better Natural Resources Legacy for Indian Country
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.c ... an-country
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva and Jose Aguto
June 06, 2013
The vast majority of the scientific community hasn’t disagreed about climate change for decades. We know we’re pumping more carbon, methane and other dangerous gases into the atmosphere at record levels, and we know we’re trapping heat that will have serious impacts on our world for many years to come. Indian Country isn’t going to be spared. We should talk about what’s coming and plan ahead. The truth is that islands are going to sink below sea level before the end of this century. Hurricanes are going to be stronger and more frequent all over the world. Unless we start mitigating the damage and reducing our emissions while there’s still time, many people’s lives are going to be much worse than they are now. Our food and water supplies will be threatened. Our homes will be at risk from larger storms, as we just saw in Oklahoma. We’re already seeing what happens long-term damage we face. The Pacific salmon is declining. Destructive pine bark beetles are killing millions of acres of forests in the West. Superstorm Sandy upended the lives of thousands of peoples and cost $65 billion. The number of severe weather events that inflict at least copy billion in damage has gone from an average of two per year in the 1980s to more than ten per year since 2010. As Indian Country Today Media Network noted not long ago, climate change is going to mean more flooding in the Pacific Northwest, more monster tornadoes in the Midwest, more tropical diseases in the South, more drought in the Southwest, stronger blizzards in the Northeast, less water for the Great Lakes, and more wildfires all over the country. None of this is a matter of debate. We know what’s coming. Tribal lands can be a big part of the response. Indian Country covers 2.4 billion acres nationwide and holds vast renewable energy potential – not just locally, but for the entire country. We should be aggressively incentivizing clean energy in every community big enough to hold a wind turbine or a solar collector. In March, the Internal Revenue Service ruled for the first time that a tribe that owns a renewable energy project can pass on federal tax credits to a lessee. This makes it easier for private entities to invest in Indian Country renewable energy efforts. We should make this ruling – currently limited to a particular case – a permanent part of the tax code. We need to fund the excellent work of Tribal natural resource managers, many of whom have coped with starvation-level budgets for too long. After the Rodeo-Chediski fire burned for three weeks through central Arizona in 2002, the White Mountain Apache Tribe halted it in its tracks by trimming forests and undergrowth. Considering the chronic underfunding of Tribal forestry programs, this was a major achievement. We know more wildfires are on the way. Our best response is preparation, not after-the-fact disaster relief. Unless we’re going to give up on our forests, we have to make sure Tribal and federal officials work more closely to plan management efforts and get the resources they need. Just as importantly, we have to make sure young people understand the value of the natural world and what’s at stake if we stay on our present course. The National Indian Youth Leadership Program, a proven and award-winning effort, has improved the lives of thousands of Native youth across the country for more than 30 years by providing culturally sensitive outdoor learning experiences. There are plenty of similar projects around the country, and we need even more of them if young people are going to understand the great American natural resources and treasures and how essential they are to their future. Some of the most important mitigation, conservation, and emergency planning programs in our country are near collapse. We need to properly fund land and water conservation through the Farm Bill and other national legislation. We especially need to take advantage of Indian Country’s great potential to create clean, sustainable jobs with the right incentives. The future of Indian country is the future of the United States, and if Tribes are struggling the country isn’t where it needs to be. That’s where we find ourselves right now. We understand how difficult it can be to embrace the reversal of climate change as a cause. It feels like too big a process, too complicated a topic, and too removed from our daily lives. We’re writing today exactly because it’s such a big issue – for our families, for our communities, for Indian Country and for the nation. It’s one on which we need everybody engaged. We hope you’ll join us.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva has represented Southern Arizona in Congress since 2003. He is the former chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, and is currently the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulations. His district includes the Tohono O’odham Nation, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, the Cocopah Indian Tribe and part of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe.
Jose Aguto is the Legislative Secretary on Sustainable Energy and Environment for the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker lobby in the public interest. Prior to joining FCNL, he worked on energy, natural resources and climate change issues for the National Congress of American Indians.
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Kathy Lynn
Adjunct Researcher, University of Oregon Environmental Studies Program
Coordinator, PNW Tribal Climate Change Project
Office: 541-346-5777
Cell: 541-206-3281
kathy@uoregon.edu
http://tribalclimate.uoregon.edu/