NWF’s mission is to inspire Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future. The National Park Service was created to preserve natural resources. So it would be logical to assume that the park service and NWF have similar interests. And we do. We both know how important land conservation is. We both want to preserve outdoor spaces and educate people about nature and show that we can live in harmony with the great outdoors. Parks are essential in maintaining wildlife habitat, curbing sprawl, and educating people and getting them excited about the Earth. But our nation’s parks are in trouble.

In parks across the country, cell phone towers are starting to go up, suburbs are pushing closer and closer to park boarders, and funding to maintain parks is disappearing. And then there are the impacts of global warming - drought, increased forest fires, increased pollution, temperature variations and new invasive species. Putting a strain on these immensely important resources threatens wildlife and will be incredibly hard to reverse. The more we stress our national parks, the more important conservation will become.

Conservation and habitat restoration are areas that NWF fellows have worked on in the past and are currently working on this year as well. Melissa Fries and Edi Sonntag, both 2006 Campus Ecology Fellows, are working on habitat conservation projects. Melissa is working to protect fragile vernal pools around the Ohio State campus while Edi is completing an intensive survey of amphibians and reptiles on the Michigan State campus. As wild land encounters more man-made threats, this type of habitat work will become more and more important.

As temperatures increase due to global warming wildlife and wildlife habitat are impacted. A recent study by The Wildlife Society shows North American wildlife species are beginning to shift their ranges northward and upward in elevation in response to temperature rise. An article "Warming Turns Bears into Cannibals" published on CNN.com on June 12 suggests that since polar bears are facing longer seasons with less ice its becoming harder and harder to prey on their typical diet of seals and are beginning to attack each other for food.

There are many direct and indirect actions that colleges and universities can take to slow global warming and protect wildlife on campus. 2005 NWF Campus Ecology Fellow, Matthew Gilbert, from the University of Alaska Anchorage researched the effects of global warming as observed by Gwich'in Athabascan elders and hunters in the Alaska Interior region, Campus Ecology team member University of Central Florida established a controlled-burn plan to restore native species, including the Gopher Tortoise, and students at the University of Oregon voted for an alternative energy source on campus and are willing to pay extra for it.

Photo Credit: Digital Vision - WWW.NWF.ORG

Having just relocated to Virginia from Juneau, Alaska, I have to admit that I know next to nothing about the invasive species present here. In Alaska, the worry is that Atlantic salmon, mollusks from New Zealand, or crabs from China will be introduced to rivers and streams. Seafood is a big deal in the ‘Last Frontier.’ I didn’t realize garlic mustard was just as threatening in Virginia until one of NWF’s naturalists pointed it out. Garlic mustard is a weed from Europe that messes up the relationship between trees and fungi, which can be devastating to forests.

Invasives are nothing new. NWF Campus Ecology Fellows have been tackling this problem for years. In 2003, Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin decided to take on invasive plants and succeeded in getting half of the campus to incorporate native plant species in landscape designs. The State University of New York dealt with invasives in 2004 by educating local kindergarten through high school students. NWF Fellow Richard Strain got students to grow local pine seedlings, which were transferred onto the SUNY campus.

Students have the potential to make enormous changes on their campuses. Northland College and the SUNY campus can be examples for other students trying to make a positive environmental change locally. To learn about other National Wildlife Federation fellows that have completed habitat restoration projects and taken on invasive species, check out our website!

(Left) University of Central Florida in Orlando commits to a fire program over the next five years that will reduce harmful fuel loads and restore native Florida habitats.

Campus habitats such as forests, prairies and gardens serve two very important roles: they provide a home for wildlife and they absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Trees and plants remove carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis; they return oxygen to the atmosphere, and use the carbon to make biomass in the form of roots, stems, and foliage. Every year in the U.S. and throughout the world a very large amount of CO2 - on the order of 100 billion metric tons - is sequestered in biomass. It is estimated that each mature tree consumes, on average, about 13 lbs. of CO2 per year.

Other NWF Campus Ecology members are also taking action: the University of West Alabama has restored 17 acres of prairie, Franklin Pierce College established a 46-acre conservation easement, and the University of Central Florida has a controlled-burn plan for 26 acres to restore native species.

Photo Credit: University of Central Florida, Alaina Bernard.

The Ford Motor Company has enjoyed the media spotlight for installing an extensive 10.4 acre green roof atop its Dearborn, Michigan assembly plant. Less well known, however, may be the role that Dr. Bradley Rowe and his colleagues in the biology, geography and engineering departments at Michigan State University played in advising Ford based on their university’s own 3,500 square-foot green roof. Green roofs offer multiple ecological benefits that are well documented by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities North America, including the potential for greenhouse gas emissions trading credits due to reduction in electricity needs for cooling in the summer and avoided heat loss in the winter. Green roofs also help slow stormwater discharge, buffer pollutants, reduce the “heat island effect” in urban environments, and provide safer habitat for plants, birds and insects. Green roofs are making appearances at campuses all across the country.

Last month, for example, graduate student, Julie Gibbs, installed a green roof on the engineering building at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Former NWF Campus Ecology Fellow, Reid Coffman, who ran a green roof experiment at Ohio State as part of his PhD thesis and now teaches at the University of Oklahoma, recently studied how green roofs support fauna at Ford Motor Company’s green roof site. Another NWF Campus Ecology Fellow, Tim Carter, recently installed a green roof at the University of Georgia (UGA). His project grew out of an effort to restore Tanyard Branch, a severly degraded stream running through the UGA campus. With the support of his advisor, Dr. Todd Rasmussen, Tim plans to transfer lesson learned to intensely developed and paved urban areas where green roofs can help mitigate water pollution problems due to stormwater runoff and reduce cooling costs. Dr. Bill Hunt at North Carolina State University and Dr. David Beattie at Pennsylvania State University run two other notable campus-based green roof research and application programs.