The purpose of this summit was to bring together leadership of DoD’s Readiness Environmental Protection Integration program and FWS to identify opportunities where the two agencies can collaborate to respond to the biodiversity and climate crises. Two overriding themes that were discussed at this summit include the development of innovative strategies to increase the pace and scale of completed conservation projects that address climate resiliency and biodiversity, and increasing the efficiency of environmental regulatory review for conservation projects.
One of the action items that came out of this summit included a commitment from DoD to fund two pilot projects that advance “game changing” collaborative opportunities to help DoD and USFWS address the climate change and biodiversity together. DoD and FWS largely relied on Sentinel Landscapes to develop the concept proposals for the pilot projects. SISL worked in collaboration with the Camp Ripley Sentinel Landscape in Minnesota to develop and submit a pilot concept to create a new position in FWS Region 3 that would have worked specifically on strategies to increase private land habitat conservation for endangered species including the Indiana and Northern Long-eared bats. Unfortunately, we recently found out that our pilot was not selected for funding. Regardless, SISL will keep working on strategies to protect habitat for Indiana and Northern Long-eared bats.
