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CONSERVATION GROUPS’ COMMENTS UNCOMPAHGRE FIELD OFFICE RMP AND DEIS 89 Although the UFO has taken steps in requiring some mitigation measures, additional emission reduction strategies, as detailed herein, can both strengthen the UFO’s existing requirements, as well as satisfy the requirements of SO 3226, FLPMA, and the MLA. G. Managing for Community and Ecosystem Resiliency. Re⋅sil⋅ience is “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” MERRIAM-WEBSTER COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY (11th ed. 2008). In the context of climate change and the many resultant impacts, such as the alteration to the biosphere and impairments to human health, the resiliency of our landscapes and a community’s ability to respond and adapt to these changes takes on a new magnitude of importance. According to experts at the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”), federal land and water resources are vulnerable to a wide range of effects from climate change, some of which are already occurring. These effects include, among others, “(1) physical effects, such as droughts, floods, glacial melting, and sea level rise; (2) biological effects, such as increases in insect and disease infestations, shifts in species distribution, and changes in the timing of natural events; and (3) economic and social effects, such as adverse impacts on tourism, infrastructure, fishing, and other resource uses.”269 These growing impacts and the necessity to employ climate mitigation measures to ensure landscape and human resiliency and their ability to adapt and respond to climate change impacts must be considered. Beyond mitigating climate change by reducing contributions of GHG pollution to the atmosphere, the BLM can also help promote ecological resiliency and adaptability by reducing external anthropogenic environmental stresses (like coal, oil and gas development) as a way of best positioning public lands, and the communities that rely on those public lands, to withstand what is acknowledged ongoing and intensifying climate change degradation. It is crucial for the BLM to close the gap in their decisionmaking regarding the cumulative contribution of coal, oil and gas development made available in the planning area, particularly given the conflict between such authorization and the agency’s responsibility to manage for healthy, BLM could itself accomplish, and to understand the nature of the problem and opportunities. Also of interest, for calendar year 2008, EPA estimated that its program avoided 46.3 million tons of CO2 equivalent, equal to the annual GHG emissions from approximately 6 million homes per year, and added revenue of nearly $802 million in natural gas sales. To speculate, the calendar year 2009 declines are likely associated with ongoing economic and financial stagnation and the low price of natural gas that has slowed natural gas drilling and production. 269 GAO Report, Climate Change: Agencies Should Develop Guidance for Addressing the Effects on Federal Land and Water Resources (2007) (attached as Exhibit 76); see also Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, National Science and Technology Council, Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Climate Change on the United States (2008) (attached as Exhibit 77); Melanie Lenart, et. al. Global Warming in the Southwest: Projections, Observations, and Impacts (2007) (attached as Exhibit 78) (describing impacts from temperature rise, drought, floods and impacts to water supply on the southwest).