Conservation Blueprint

Prioritizing ecosystems and habitats for conservation is always a difficult task. Ecologists prefer to highlight areas that are productive and that support a multitude of species, rather than those that support a few large mammals alone.

However, how do we protect ecosystems that are changing or shifting rapidly due to an issue beyond our local control? How do identify which areas will be important to protect in fifty years when the Arctic may be a very different place than it is today.

Sea ice and permafrost are main drivers of ecosystem function for much of the Arctic. That ice and permafrost are melting rapidly. Waters are warming and acidifying faster than anywhere else on the planet. A simple static network of protected areas will not likely be enough to safeguard the polar bear, narwhal, belugas and caribou whose habitats are shifting around them.

WWF is developing a conservation blueprint for the Arctic that uses cutting edge science to determine what to protect and innovates policy measures to resolve how best to protect it. Working with global experts, we are first conducting a rapid assessment to determine what highly productive features and areas are going to persist despite climate change (such as continental shelves or river deltas). We are then downscaling Arctic climate models to determine how ecosystems are going to shift, which areas are going to become ecologically productive and which are going to likely become barren. All of this will be used to develop a blueprint for conserving the Arctic and her species through this century.