The Siskiyou Crest Connectivity and Climate Migration Corridor

Other studies have demonstrated the area’s resilience and its ability to facilitate landscape scale species movement in response to climate change,^[2] as well as its importance in sustaining regional biodiversity in a changing climate.^[3]

Additional studies have identified the Siskiyou Crest region as one of the Pacific Northwest’s highest conservation-priority areas for the enhancement of resilience in the existing regional reserve network. Scientific research also shows that the Siskiyou Crest is specifically noted for its importance to landscape scale species dispersal and climate resilience.^[4]

As our climate is unnaturally altered by fossil fuel emissions and poor land management practices, species will be on the move, searching for suitable habitat and shifting their populations either geographically across the landscape, or higher in elevation in order to compensate for increased heat and aridity caused by climate change. Scientific research has shown that if adequately protected and managed for biodiversity, the relatively intact habitats of the Siskiyou Crest region will provide an important connectivity and climate migration corridor, linking the major habitats of the West Coast, and facilitating climate induced species migration on the landscape scale.

The Siskiyou Crest provides unique microclimates, climate refugia, and intact wildland habitats that allow for the persistence of an extremely varied and diverse biota. Yet, this diversity and the region’s important function on the landscape will only be secure when the intact public lands in this corridor are more adequately protected.