For State Wildlife Action Plans



Download 3.75 Mb.
Page6/40
Date29.01.2017
Size3.75 Mb.
#12764
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   40

Intended Audience/Use


This document itself is a product of the RCN Grant Program (RCN 2011-07) and is intended to serve as a resource for fish and wildlife agency staff and their conservation partners during their comprehensive review and revision of Wildlife Action Plans by 2015. It is also a resource for other conservation agencies and organizations in the Northeast and other planning review and revision processes in each of the Northeast states. The document provides a regional conservation context in which each of the Northeast states participates and should be incorporated into local, state, and regional planning efforts.

States are encouraged to use part or all of the text of this document in their Wildlife Action Plan revisions to address the conservation context and priorities across the Northeast states. State wildlife agencies and their partners are welcome to copy or reproduce any of the material contained in this document and to adopt entire sections or chapters from this document into the corresponding chapter of their Wildlife Action Plan as needed. They are also welcome to use the entire document as a chapter or section providing regional context for their Action Plan as an appendix or by reference (NEFWDTC 2013).


Further Information


Contact the NEFWDTC: Jenny Dickson, Chair, Jenny.Dickson@ct.gov; Dan Rosenblatt, Vice Chair, dlrosenb@gw.dec.state.ny.us

Northeast Regional Conservation Needs Grants Program: http://rcngrants.org

Wildlife Action Plans: www.teaming.com

Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies:

SWAP [State Wildlife Action Plan] Best Practices report: http://teaming.com/sites/default/files/SWAP%20Best%20Practices%20Report%20Nov%202012.pdf

SWAP Revision Resources from TWW: http://teaming.com/swap-revision-guidance-best-practices

State Wildlife Action Plan Revisions Guidance: http://www.wildlifeactionplan.org/sites/default/files/Revision%20Guidance%20Letter%20NAAT.pdf

Eight Required Elements and Sub-Element Guidance in Wildlife Action Plans: http://www.wildlifeactionplan.org/sites/default/files/NAAT%20Sub-elements.pdf

Official 2007 SWAP Revision Guidance from USFWS: http://www.teaming.com/sites/default/files/Revision%20Guidance%20Letter%20NAAT.pdf

Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA): http://www.neafwa.org/

Albany I Workshop: http://www.northatlanticlcc.org/resources/pdfs/8_Albany_I_Summary_and_Projects_List.pdf

Albany II Workshop: http://rcngrants.org/content/summary-report-Northeast-regional-conservation-framework-workshop-2011-0

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives: http://www.fws.gov/landscape-conservation/lcc.html

Appalachian: http://www.applcc.org/

North Atlantic: http://www.northatlanticlcc.org/

South Atlantic: http://www.southatlanticlcc.org/

Upper Midwest and Great Lakes: http://www.greatlakeslcc.org/

Chapter 1—Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need

This chapter provides information about the 367 fish and wildlife species identified as Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need (RSGCN) in the Northeast by the Northeast Fish and Wildlife Diversity Technical Committee (NEFWDTC). The chapter highlights priority species for which dedicated conservation activities have been supported through the Regional Conservation Needs Grant and partner programs. It summarizes the most current efforts for these species addressing their status and distribution. Examples of ongoing regional models and maps of species distributions illustrate the types of information and data products available to states at http://www.fws.gov/northeast/science/nalcc.html. Case studies illustrate how the Regional Conservation Planning Framework is applied to high-priority RSGCN species. Examples of management actions adopted in multiple Northeast states to ensure the conservation of these targeted RSGCN species are also summarized. Please see Appendix 1 and Terwilliger Consulting Inc. and NEFWDTC (2013) for additional information and links to each Regional Conservation Needs (RCN) project mentioned in this chapter.


Background


The approach for identifying RSGCN has evolved through several complementary efforts focused on the conservation of specific taxonomic groups to the more comprehensive analysis reported here.

As states developed nongame and endangered species programs in the 1980s (French and Pence 2000), they focused conservation efforts primarily on federally and state endangered or threatened wildlife. State biologists and species experts often evaluated species population conditions within their political boundaries, which sometimes resulted in listing of species occurring at the edges of their geographic ranges (e.g., Henslow’s sparrows and upland sandpipers). At the same time, biologists increasingly recognized the need to evaluate species with populations that were endemic to the region (e.g., New England cottontail and Bicknell’s thrush) or that had high percentages of their populations in the region (e.g., golden-winged warbler and wood thrush). Regional and national efforts began for bird species conservation in the late 1980s and led to the formation of Partners in Flight (PIF) in 1990 a partnership that developed priority-setting methods for bird species. Rosenberg and Wells (1999) developed and applied a methodology to rank bird conservation priorities for the Northeast by combining distribution and abundance data from state breeding bird atlases and the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The resulting range-wide assessments defined “responsibility” as the portion of a species’ range that falls within the geographic area in question—usually a state boundary.


Additional priority-setting methods were summarized for non-game species throughout the Northeast region (Therres 1999), which resulted in the first region-wide list of species in need of conservation. This list consolidated information from NEFWDTC members from all Northeast region states and identified 106 nongame species, including 15 mammals, 23 birds, 15 reptiles, 12 amphibians, 30 fish, and 11 freshwater mussels in need of regional conservation. Hunt (2005) applied this methodology to develop conservation priorities for the 127 SGCN in the New Hampshire Wildlife Action Plan (New Hampshire Fish and Game 2006), including insects and freshwater mussels. A similar ranking methodology was applied by the NEPARC to identify high-priority Northeastern herpetofauna. This NEPARC priority-setting process has been applied across taxa by the NEFWDTC to develop the Northeast RSGCN list.
The most recent RSGCN review and re-evaluation was conducted by the NEFWDTC regional taxa teams in 2011-2013 with assistance from the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NALCC), and is provided here along with ongoing additional species prioritization efforts by NALCC. The most recent effort highlights collaboration between the NEFWDTC and the NALCC to improve and implement a screening of Northeast wildlife for conservation need and responsibility, and better capture and quantify species risk in the region. NALCC, NEFWDTC, and state staff initiated an effort to assemble the best available data from diverse sources for each of the 355 species and subspecies. The outcome of the ongoing effort will be a thorough evaluation of data quality for each, including maps of probable distribution and known occurrence.
In parallel, NALCC has assembled landscape and environmental data for the Northeast region, providing state by state perspective on urbanization, natural resources, connectivity, climate, and many other factors. When combined with maps of species distributions, this information will allow conservation partners to understand the relative condition of important locations for each species. Ultimately, having access to all the best available data will allow states and their partners to identify the best opportunities to conserve land for wildlife.



Download 3.75 Mb.

Share with your friends:
1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   ...   40




The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message

    Main page