While many researchers, conservation practitioners and resource managers understand the reality of climate change they are often still challenged by what to do about it. Unfortunately, the complexity inherent to obtaining and correctly interpreting appropriate climate information as it applies to ecological systems can, in many instances, exacerbate this challenge. However understanding how to use climate data is not the only limiting factor in getting climate change adaptation implemented. The conservation community is also limited by its traditional conservation paradigm and a lack of empowerment to take risks in the face of purported uncertainty.

Results/Conclusions

Several examples exist of places where conservation practitioners have started the process of incorporating climate change adaptation into management, and lessons can be learned from those processes that can be applied to other locations. In the turtle conservation is being revisited as nesting beaches and sea turtle demographics are threatened by rising seas and increasing temperatures. Rather than continuing to create protected areas for present nesting beaches, efforts are being made to identify beaches with greater elevation or available land behind them for natural migration, and coastal vegetation is being restored to both protect beaches from storm surge and lower sand temperatures which determine sea turtle hatchling sex. Other examples that will be described include marine zoning and land management. Finally the development of new adaptation tools, planning approaches and resources will be presented. The real challenge in climate change adaptation is not what information to use but how to start new creative conservation thinking and management implementation that could create more robust ecological function in the future.