Actions For Individuals and Landowners 

Plant Meadows: Wildflowers and native grasses provide excellent habitat for insects and birds. Converting lawns to meadows has the added benefit of creating attractive landscapes that reduce maintenance requirements.

Plant and Manage Gardens for Habitat and Carbon Sequestration: Use pollinator plants in gardens to support bees and other insects. Add organic amendments such as compost, manure and crop residues to increase soil carbon and improve soil biology; reduce or eliminate tillage to reduce carbon loss.

Infiltrate Rainwater: Rain gardens, vegetated buffer strips, retention basins, and infiltration catch basins facilitate stormwater infiltration that reduces runoff and increases groundwater reservoirs feeding wetlands and small streams in periods of drought. Such groundwater reserves also provide cool water to help sustain cold water species. Rain gardens and vegetated buffers infiltrate water and provide plantings that increase ecological value and sequester carbon.

Control Invasives: As existing plant species become less well adapted to changing conditions, invasives may be increasingly able to move in to replace them and take over areas. Identify and control invasives, the non-native plants that displace native plants or have the ability to create monocultures.

Manage Forests for Habitat and Carbon Sequestration: Promote forests that have a diversity of tree species, ample tree regeneration of future-adapted species, vigorous trees of various sizes and ages, a variety of tree arrangements, and an appropriate amount of deadwood gives forests a complex structure and helps them withstand and recover from stressors. These practices also improve soil health and increase soil carbon sequestration. When forests need to be harvested, careful adherence to excellent forestry practices, such as those utilizing alternative, less intensive forest management systems and those utilizing Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF) can reduce the loss of carbon and maintain ecologically healthy forests.

Consider Personal Lifestyle Changes

Download NRWA's Climate Impact Action List for Individuals and Landowners (PDF).

An Example: Eating Less Meat Benefits Our Climate

Reducetarianism is the practice of eating less meat. The concept is appealing because not everyone is able or willing to follow a completely vegetarian diet. Reducetarians improve their health, save the lives of animals, and help mitigate climate change. Here are some reasons to consider adopting this practice in your life:

• Every minute, the land equivalent of 7 football fields is cleared to make room for animal agriculture.
• Cows produce 150 billion gallons of methane (a powerful greenhouse gas) per day.
• Transitioning to more plant-based diets could reduce the global mortality rate by 6-10%.
• Producing one pound of beef requires over 1,800 gallons of water.

Courtesy of the Reducetarian Foundation: http://www.reducetarian.org