While many national and Indiana parks and recreation agencies discuss instituting adaptive policies to account for climate change, institutional and social barriers apparently exist that prevent public land managers from implementing these plans. These barriers include the following:

• Lack of funding
• Current environmental attitudes
• Public opinion

While lack of funding, knowledge, and current environmental attitudes are crucial barriers, public opinion is widely cited by managers as the most important barrier to implementing adaptive policies. Managers indicate that they cannot influence the adoption of policies in public agencies which go against the wishes of most members of the community, so if most of the community is not interested in climate change policy implementation, adopting those policies and practices is difficult.

Download the full report: Climate Friendly Parks and Public Lands