Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation Workshop

Abstract

In August 2022, the Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation project team convened 35 practitioners of population supplementation (stocking, planting, etc.) from New England and beyond (e.g., MA, VT, NY, ME, ID) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to discuss how trait diversity within species could contribute to managing priority populations under the challenges of climate change. The expertise of attendees spanned aquatic, terrestrial, and marine coastal fauna and flora. Agency representation included federal (US Environmental Protection Agency, USGS Great Lakes Research Center, USGS Cooperative Units, USGS Conte Lab, US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, National Parks Service) and state (Mass Audubon, NY Dept of Environmental Conservation, VT Forest Parks and Recreation, NY State Parks and Historic Sites) levels, academic institutions (UMass Amherst, Cornell, Mount Holyoke College, UMaine, Northeastern), and private (Riverence) and nonprofit (Native Plant Trust) sectors. The primary goal of the workshop was to co-develop the concept of Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation (CAPS), which aligns climate-associated traits - like thermal or drought tolerance - of propagated species with the environmental conditions that they are expected to experience in the future.