The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in the northern Great Plains contains millions of wetlands that provide habitat for breeding and migrating birds. Although conservation and management largely focuses on protecting habitat for nesting ducks, other wetland-dependent birds also rely on this region. Land managers want to know whether habitat conserved for ducks provides habitat for other species and how these habitats will be affected by climate change. A primary goal of this research has been to assist managers in conserving areas that will provide habitat to a broad suite of species. We considered how climate change is likely to affect land-use patterns and agricultural conversion risk. We then predicted how climate change will affect the density and distribution of wetlands under future climate conditions based on models incorporating land-use, climate models, hydrology, and distribution of wetland basins. Although the density of wetlands with water will most likely decline across the region, the distribution of wetlands probably will not shift spatially because the location of wetland basins is static. Species distribution modeling techniques projected that geographic ranges of nearly 30 species of wetland-dependent birds will decline by an average of 31% (range: 75% decline to 16% increase) as the climate warms. To test whether waterfowl are effective representatives, or surrogates, for other wetland-dependent birds, we used data from citizen science bird surveys and species life history to mathematically demonstrate how closely wetland birds associate with waterfowl. At small scales in space and time (for example, a small wetland complex on an annual basis), many waterfowl and other wetland birds species were segregated. Yet at larger scales in space and time, the scales at which habitat protection decisions are made, many species appeared to co-occur because various microhabitats were represented in the larger dynamic landscapes through 30-yr time periods.