Defenders of Wildlife's comments on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's draft “Strategic Growth Policy” for the National Wildlife Refuge System. The draft policy is intended to guide how the Fish and Wildlife Service will add lands and new wildlife refuges to the Refuge System. Defenders' comments encourage the Fish and Wildlife Service to contribute to the National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy's goal of identifying and conserving areas for an ecologically-connected network of public and private terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine conservation areas that are likely to be resilient to climate change and to support a broad range of species under changed conditions and to conserve and ecological connections among conservation areas to facilitate fish, wildlife, and plant migration, range shifts, and other transitions caused by climate change.
