Resource stewardship objectives and actions for climate change-sensitive cultural and natural resources in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: Outputs from January?February 2022 climate change adaptation strategy development

Abstract

This report presents climate change-informed resource stewardship strategies for diverse Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve natural and cultural resources. The strategies were developed in early 2022 by park staff and other subject-matter experts in a scenario-based climate change adaptation planning process. Strategy development was facilitated by National Park Service (NPS) climate change adaptation specialists. Strategies address critical climate change implications for park resources identified in an immediately preceding (fall-2021) climate-resource scenario development process. The overall, nearly-year-long scenario- and strategy-development process was entirely virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this circumstance was constraining in some ways, it also provided many benefits, including lower barriers to participant entry, smoother pacing, more opportunities to incorporate personal reflection and individual work, and more points in the process where facilitators could intervene to support participants or make changes. Absence of travel costs, plus organization of the process into a larger number of smaller steps than in the past, allowed the 11 participating park resource management staff to include a large pool of several dozen federal, tribal, state, academic, and private-sector partners. Climate change adaptation strategies are most likely to foster climate change-informed resource stewardship when they support a specific planning process. In this case, that process was the 2021?2023 development of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve Resource Stewardship Strategy. A Resource Stewardship Strategy is a dynamic planning tool that parks use to set goals for natural and cultural resource stewardship, identify activities to achieve and maintain desired conditions, and track progress.