Importance of Climate Impacts on Wildlife, Integrated Modeling and Relevance to the IRI

There is increasing stress on Wildlife all over the world due to a variety of factors including loss of habitat and conflicts with humans. The stresses are particularly great in "developing countries" in which IRI has the greatest interest. Under these stressed circumstances, wildlife are increasingly vulnerable to both climate variability and climate change. Wildlife scientists and conservations are increasingly aware of the importance of climate. However, they are yet to systematically investigate the impacts of climate variability and change or to use climate predictions. The project that is proposed here will pioneer not only the investigation of climate impacts on wildlife but also the integration of climatic predictions in integrated physical, ecological and societal modeling.

The stresses on wildlife take on the greatest urgency in the case of endangered species. Fragile populations are particularly vulnerable to additional stresses due climate variations and climate change. Indeed the Asian elephant population that number 45,000 in 13 countries have suffered a rapid decline in numbers in the last few decades. Indeed over 250 elephants die due to conflicts with humans every year in Sri Lanka and India. The total population of elephants in Sri Lanka has been estimated to be around 4000 and the conflicts particularly due to land-settlement and loss of range following irrigation schemes such as the Mahaweli Project has led to tremendous stresses. The Asian elephant is thus "endangered" and studies of climate impact taken on particular significance

Human-Elephant conflicts are of vital importance to rural societies. Not only do these societies face increasing fatalities and fear but also agricultural and other economic losses. In addition, the sustainability of the wild elephant population extends beyond the economic realm in Sri Lanka, in view of the central role that elephant plays in cultural activities such as Buddhist religious observances.

The results from this work will not only be useful for human-elephant conflict management in Sri Lanka but will also serve as a path-breaker for the integration of climate information and prediction in integrated modeling and wildlife management. CIESIN is well situated to use the outcomes of the present project to for integrated modeling. The Wildlife Trust will be using the case study to convene a conference to address the issue of managing climate impacts on wildlife. This project thus can serve as a flagship project for the IRI, CIESIN and Wildlife Trust on integrated modeling and wildlife management.

In particular, this is an opportunity for the IRI, to leverage work already done (data collections, data analysis, downscaling methods, hydrological modeling and on-ground partnerships) for water management project in Sri Lanka. In addition, the human-elephant conflict is a critical dimension in both environmental management and irrigation planning and management in the Mahaweli basin that already critical concerns the Environment Division of the Mahaweli Authority. Methodologies for the integration of data from the IRI data library in GIS applications will be useful for a variety of other projects. The comprehensive physical, ecological and societal modeling approaches that is to be conducted for this project under the leadership of CIESIN will be an important contribute to both the ongoing IRI water management and the proposed IRI-IWMI malaria hazard forecasting projects. In addition, an archive of integrated modeling and predictions for a region in Sri Lanka could provide the IRI with an ideal test bed for a variety of studies leading to an integrated and comprehensive study of climate impacts and management in a particular region.

The modalities developed between the IRI, CIESIN and Wildlife Trust to incorporate climate information into integrated modeling and wildlife management can be extended to the many other tropical location in where the three agencies have particular interests and also field operations.