The most recent National Climate Assessment was released last week. This second volume, “Impacts, Risks and Adaptation in the United States,” follows the report on climate change science released last year.

Under the Global Change Research Act of 1990, a climate assessment must be prepared every four years by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which facilities cooperation and collaboration among scientists from 13 federal entities. These two volumes make up the fourth assessment since 2000.

Over 300 scientists collaborated to develop this most recent report, which indicates that the United States has already warmed by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. It warns that this warming trend will lead to quantifiable effects on the economy, natural resources and ecosystem services such as the clean air and water Americans rely on

While the first volume focused on climate science, the second volume takes an in-depth look at the effects of climate change, both those that are already being seen and those that scientists expect in coming years. The report’s authors approached this from both a topical standpoint, with chapters on ecosystems, water, health and other topics, as well as a regional standpoint, examining impacts around the country. They also addressed response strategies of mitigation and adaptation.

The report highlights that climate change is already causing disruptions in ecosystems, such as coral reefs and sea ice, which will continue as warming increases. The spread of invasive species will continue to impact wildlife, agriculture and human health. Additionally, the report states that changes in climate will cause “substantial net damage to the U.S. economy” and impede economic growth. The report notes that efforts to address climate change over the last several years have not been at the scale needed to avoid significant impacts.

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service were among the natural resource agencies involved in developing and writing the report. Virginia Burkett, chief scientist for USGS’s climate and land use change programs, served as a member of the group’s steering committee. Despite the extensive federal involvement in the report, both the president and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have indicated they do not intend to incorporate the report’s findings in their policy decisions.

After a lull in legislation dealing with climate change, recent weeks have seen more Congressional action on the issue as members introduce legislation framing the debate for the next Congress, beginning in January. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., introduced the “Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act,” H.R. 71731, which would tax carbon at $15-per-metric-ton fee and provide rebates to citizens with the revenue. Meanwhile, Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee recently released a report regarding the economic impacts of failing to address climate change.

Read TWS’ Position Statement on global climate change and wildlife.

The 2018 Farm Bill is nearly complete, but it comes two months after the 2014 Farm Bill expired, which has left the future growth of some programs in limbo. House and Senate leadership working on the conference committee have reached an agreement in principle on the bill’s provisions. Once the legislation’s costs have been assessed by the Congressional Budget Office, a final vote can be held.

The 2018 Farm Bill sets forth agricultural policy for the next five years. The large package of titles in the bill includes provisions that affect everything from commodity payments and subsidies for farmers, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as food stamps), and several private-land conservation programs. The House and Senate versions of the bill differ in several respects, including how they deal with conservation programs. The conference committee has been working to reconcile these differences since early September.

Funding amounts and acreage allotments for the major conservation programs, the Conservation Reserve Program,  the Conservation Stewardship Program  and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program have been a subject of contention between the House and Senate and were one of the last issues to be settled in conference. The House bill would eliminate the Conservation Stewardship Program. The compromise will likely bring some changes to current programs, including an increase in the acreage cap for the Conservation Reserve Program from its current 24-million-acre cap.

While both versions of the bill contain forestry provisions, the House bill included additional contentious provisions for increased forest thinning and expedited environmental review spurred by recent wildfires. In recent months, Republicans in both the House and Senate have argued for increased thinning, while others have argued for increased wildfire suppression funding. Forest management provisions now seem unlikely to make it into the final bill.

Congress had planned to vote on the Farm Bill in early December, but the vote was delayed in light of the death of former President George H.W. Bush. The bill is still expected to be completed this Congress.

Read The Wildlife Society’s Technical Review and Policy Brief for more information about the effects of Farm Bill conservation programs on wildlife conservation and management.

For decades, the story of the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog (Rana sierrae) has been a bleak one. Once abundant in lakes and ponds in and around Yosemite National Park, the frog has been headed on a course toward extinction, first due to the introduction of nonnative fish that consumed them, and then due to the arrival of a deadly chytrid fungus.

But researchers have found new hope for the endangered frog. Surviving populations are evolving increased resistance to the disease, allowing the frogs to recolonize lakes where they’ve been extirpated.

“We need time, we need habitat that’s suitable, but given those two characteristics, if we have the resources, the funding, we can reestablish frog populations across a good chunk of their former range,” said University of California Santa Barbara ecologist Roland Knapp, who has studied the frogs for 25 years. “For amphibians in this day and age, that’s incredibly good news.”

Knapp is co-author on a recent study in the journal Ecosphere that examined the translocation of frogs that had been exposed to the deadly pathogen but appeared to have developed increased resistance to it. The frogs were taken from a large, surviving donor population in the Sierra Nevada and reintroduced to two nearby fish-free lakes in an effort to reestablish populations there.

The results were mixed. At one lake, in the more than 10 years since the frogs were translocated, their population has swelled into the hundreds.  At the other, the population appears to be on the verge of disappearing again. But Knapp is optimistic. Based on results at other lakes, he said, reintroduction efforts appear to be working overall, although high rates of infection can cause some populations to fail.

“Across all of the reintroduced populations,  the majority appear on their way to becoming established,” he said.

The disappearance of frogs from the Sierra Nevada is part of a global decline in amphibians due in part to the deadly chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd. Biologists believe mountain yellow-legged frogs, including R. sierrae and the closely related R. muscosa, have disappeared from over 93 percent of their historical range in the Sierra Nevada, landing them on the federal endangered species list in 2014.

“It’s been an incredible ride for these species, from being essentially everywhere there was suitable habitat to being nearly absent from their historical range,” Knapp said.

For years, the numbers continued to decline, but then some of the frogs appeared to develop a resistance to the disease. It doesn’t provide complete protection, Knapp warned. They’re still susceptible to the disease, particularly as they transform from tadpoles into subadults.

“In a large population, when metamorphosis is at its peak, you’ll find dozens of dead frogs,” he said. “But enough are surviving that the population is able to persist and recover. They haven’t evolved a perfect solution, but they’ve evolved a solution, and that’s the important thing.”

The findings suggest that if predatory fish — the frogs’ other major cause of mortality — can be eliminated from some lakes, the mountain yellow-legged frog can return, Knapp said.

“It is good news, which is rare in the world of amphibian declines,” said co-author Maxwell Joseph, a data scientist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who handled these frogs as an undergraduate with Knapp and turned his attention to them again, developing statistical models to understand the factors driving their survival. The model revealed that data collected shortly after the translocations provide insight into the long-term viability of reintroduced populations. Knowing that can help guide future translocation efforts, he said.

“The estimates for survival that you get after a year or two might give you a pretty good idea of what might happen in five or 10 years,” he said.

Knapp believes the findings may resonate beyond the Sierra Nevada, anywhere where frogs have developed resistance to the chytrid fungus that has devastated their populations. “I think this has implications for the recovery of frogs all around the world,” he said.