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Understanding and predicting future ecological impacts of climate change, and then developing a conservation strategy to minimize the negative impacts on biodiversity, remains one of the greatest environmental challenges of the twenty-first century. We lack a robust understanding of how climate variability (e.g., temperature, precipitation) itself influences the biology of organisms and, when evidence points to a species being vulnerable to the effects of climate change, there is a lack of specific and timely recommendations for managers to reduce that vulnerability. This chapter reviews how we assess which species are most impacted by climate change and then provides a framework and examples of common strategies and tactics managers can use to incorporate climate change adaptation into bird conservation. In doing so, we present a suite of strategies designed to translate broad conservation concepts into targeted and prescriptive actions for birds.

Neoliberal reforms during the 1990s transformed natural resource access and environmental management worldwide. In Peru, hydroelectricity privatization allowed Duke Energy to consolidate control over the Cañón del Pato facility on the Santa River, which is fed largely by Cordillera Blanca glacier runoff. Once Duke Energy Egenor began management in 1997, the state's hydroelectric company, Electroperú, ended its glacier monitoring and glacial lake engineering programs. This was the first break in continuous glacier disaster prevention programs since 1951. Neoliberal privatization thus heightened climate change vulnerability while simultaneously making Duke Energy a major but highly contested stakeholder in the Santa River waterscape that extended up to Cordillera Blanca glaciers. Meanwhile, threats from glacier retreat and the 1997 El Niño event continued. In 2003, fears of another glacial lake outburst flood at Lake Palcacocha above Huaraz spurred government programs to manage glacier hazards and bolstered popular protests against Duke Energy.

From glaciers melting in Glacier National Park to corals bleaching in Virgin Islands National Park, field research in US National Parks has detected statistically significant changes that analyses of possible causes have attributed to human-induced climate change. Research that has used data from US National Parks shows that climate change has also raised sea level, shifted vegetation and animal ranges, increased tree mortality, and caused other impacts. Average annual temperature of the US National Park System increased at a statistically significant rate of 0.9 ± 0.2ºC per century (mean ± SE) from 1895 to 2010. If we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, cars, and deforestation, temperature in the 21st century could increase at two to six times the rate of 20th century warming, and temporal and spatial patterns of precipitation could change substantially. Analyses of vulnerabilities of resources in US National Parks indicate that continued climate change could fundamentally alter many of the globally unique ecosystems, endangered plant and animal species, and physical and cultural resources that national parks protect.