We Are Waiting to Hear from You

We Are Waiting to Hear From You

By Greg Siekaniec, Chief, National Wildlife Refuge System

In 1998, just a year after Congress passed the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act, the Refuge System forged a bold strategic direction contained in a document, Fulfilling the Promise, which set the stage for an energetic period of implementing our vision.

In the ensuing decade, numerous goals from Promises have been fulfilled.

The first three objectives under the category “wildlife and habitat” helped set the stage and define Strategic Habitat Conservation, now the guiding principle of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

We established numerous policy statements that help guide the administration of refuges, including wilderness stewardship, compatibility and comprehensive conservation planning.

Promises called for new alliances through citizen and community partnerships. Today, the Refuge System has about 230 Friends groups – roughly 80 more than in 1998. We have a host of other alliances, including a very productive partnership with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

We continue to make leadership development a priority across the Service through a variety of programs, and have recognized career pathways at many levels of our organization.

Promises was a huge success. The vision and recommendations then identified are still important and in many ways still valid. However, over the past 13 years, many new challenges have emerged upon the landscape of conservation.

Today, as never before, we must plan our conservation strategies through the lens of dramatic landscape change, including habitat fragmentation, changing climate and dramatic population shifts. Climate change is accelerating in ways we did not recognize only a few years ago. You can say the same for America’s demographics. The Hispanic population, for example, increased from about 35 million in 2000 to more than 48 million in 2010, and is expected to reach nearly 60 million in 2020, according to the Census Bureau. The bureau also predicts that ethnic minorities – African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans – will represent more than half of the U.S. population by 2040.

Development has encroached on refuges in numerous locations, and what were once viewed as relatively secure “buffers” of working landscapes have been subdivided into many forms of intensive development. In some areas, water is in critically short supply for conservation purposes and, because of a variety of threats, its quality is of concern.

Add one other fact: We expect a surge of retirements. Survey data tell us that nearly half of all positions in the Refuge System may become vacant in the next 10 years.

Our conclusion? While Promises propelled the Refuge System forward in countless meaningful ways, it’s time for us to address the myriad challenges we face with a new invigorated vision statement and implementation plan.

The result is a process we call Conserving the Future: Wildlife Refuges and the Next Generation. This process already has garnered a lot of attention within the Service and among our partners. Now, we’re at the public stage of building a new strategic vision.

Whether you are a Service employee, a member of a Refuge Friends group or someone strongly interested in the Refuge System, we want to hear your ideas on the vision document by Earth Day, April 22. You have plenty of time to comment: Go online at http://americaswildlife.org/ and let us know what you think.

At this moment, in this decade, we have a singular opportunity to build a stronger Refuge System that honors our conservation legacy and looks to our future. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.