Species Protection as a Natural Climate Solution
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SPECIES PROTECTION
AS A NATURAL
CLIMATE SOLUTION
by Mackenzie Landa
Mackenzie Landa is Counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis,
where she leads the Committee's work on nature-based climate solutions.
SUMMARY
This Article, adapted from Chapter 16 of What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?, 2d Edition
(ELI Press, forthcoming 2020), explores existing and potential wildlife conservation policies that could play a
vital role in mitigating global climate change. It describes how climate change is impacting wildlife and bio-
diversity around the globe and reviews the history and current state of U.S. policy, including how the federal
government currently manages climate change issues under the ESA. It then proposes ways that the ESA and
other wildlife conservation policies can mitigate climate change as natural climate solutions. It analyzes new
wildlife conservation policies for their potential to mitigate climate change, and concludes that these can pro-
vide much-needed protection for species and biodiversity, while also serving as a valuable and meaningful
tool to combat climate change.
Climate change is among the leading threats to the
long-term survival of species and habitats today.1
As such, wildlife protection is a crucial component
of the climate conversation. Increasingly warm tempera-
tures are having widespread impacts on ecosystems and
biodiversity around the globe. Species migration, extinc-
tions, and changes in behavior and population have already
been recorded.2 Habitats are shifting and shrinking and
the wildlife that depend on them face an uncertain future
as temperatures continue to rise.3
While the impacts of climate change on biodiversity
cannot be understated, wildlife can play another role in
the climate discussion: mitigation. Wildlife conservation
laws and policies can be used both as a tool to help wild-
life adapt to climate change and as a powerful natural cli-
mate solution to mitigate climate change. Natural climate
solutions, such as large landscape conservation and the
1. United Nations, U.N. Report: Nature's Dangerous Decline Unprecedented;
Species Extinction Rates Accelerating, SUSTAINABLE DEV. GOALS BLOG (May
6,2019), https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-
decline-unprecedented-report/ [hereinafter U.N. Report].
2. Douglas Lipton et al., Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, and Biodiversity, in 2
IMPACTS, RISKS, AND ADAPTATION IN THE U.S.: FOURTH NAT'L CLIMATE AS-
SESSMENT 275-76 (R.D. Reidmiller et al., eds. 2018).
3. Id ; see also Craig Welch, Half ofAll Species Are on the Move-And We're Feel-
ing It, NAT'L GEO., Apr. 27, 2017, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/
news/2017/04/climate-change-species-migration-disease/.
protection and restoration of forests, wetlands, and other
natural spaces, are ways to significantly reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions and store carbon in lands and soils.4
Improved land and habitat management have the poten-
tial to deliver up to one-third of the emissions reductions
needed to meet emissions targets by 2030.5
Wildlife conservation policies should be considered and
utilized as one such natural climate solution. For exam-
ple, protecting species such as the polar bear from climate
change under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) provides
safeguards for the species, but it also makes oil and gas
development in polar bear habitat more difficult, thereby
limiting the potential for fossil fuel emissions6; establish-
ing wildlife corridors is necessary for species connectivity,
but it also requires preservation of natural spaces which
sequester carbon; and designating critical habitat provides
4. See Joseph E. Fargione et al., Natural Climate Solutions for the United States,
Sc. ADV., Nov. 2018, at 4.
5. Natural Climate Solutions, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY, https://www.nature.
org/en-us/what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/natural-climate-solutions/
(lastvisited Dec. 19,2019); Georgina Gustin, Natural Climate Solutions Could
Cancel Out a Fifth of U.S. Emissions, Study Finds, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS,
Nov. 14, 2018, https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14112018/climate-
change-solutions-forests-farms-carbon-storage-cancel-out-emissions-study.
6. See generally Eric Hull, Using Climate Change Impacts as Leverage to Protect
the Polar Bear: The Value of Habitat Protection in Promoting Animal Welfare,
in WHAT CAN ANIMAL LAw LEARN FROM ENVIRONMENTAL LAw? (2d edition
forthcoming 2020).
ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER
50 ELR 10498
6-2020](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/elrna50&div=53&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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