|
The Right Science in the Right Places
In the face of escalating challenges such as land-use conversion, invasive species, water scarcity, and a range of other complex issues -- all of which are amplified by accelerated climate change -- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service embarked several years ago to develop a broader vision for conservation. Through a cooperative effort culminating in the 2006 National Ecological Assessment Team Report, the Service and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) outlined a unifying adaptive resource management approach for conservation at “landscape” scales -- the entire range of a priority species or suite of species. Known as “strategic habitat conservation” or SHC, it is a way of thinking and of doing business that requires us to set biological goals for priority species populations, allows us to make strategic decisions about our work, and encourages us to constantly reassess and improve our actions -- all critical steps in dealing with large-scale conservation challenges and the uncertainty of accelerated climate change. This is our vision for building an organization and workforce that can successfully address 21st-Century conservation challenges. Since then, the Service has taken significant steps to turn this vision into reality. Our ongoing commitment to landscape conservation is reflected in the Service’s draft Strategic and Action plans for Climate Change and FY2010 budget proposal, which targets funding to build applied science capacity for biological planning and conservation design -- critical elements of our SHC framework and climate change response. To ensure we’re “putting science in the right places,” the Service Directorate, in April 2009, determined the agency needed a national geographic framework for implementing landscape conservation. Just as flyways have provided an effective spatial frame of reference to build capacity and partnerships for international, national, state and local waterfowl conservation, this geographic framework will provide a continental platform upon which the Service can work with partners to connect project- and site-specific efforts to larger biological goals and outcomes. The 22 Geographic Areas comprising the framework map were developed by aggregating Bird Conservation Regions (BCRs), biologically based units representing long-standing partnerships that facilitate conservation planning and design at landscape scales. BCRs can be partitioned into smaller ecological units when finer-scale planning and design are necessary. The Geographic Areas also incorporate Freshwater Ecoregions of the World as a standard unit for aquatic species considerations -- the same framework adopted by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan -- as well as existing ecological units (Omernick’s Level II) to account for a variety of terrestrial species’ needs. In most Geographic Areas, the boundaries of key partnerships are left intact to preserve existing conservation and science capacities. The Service will use the framework as a base geography to locate the first generation of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) and in planning a second generation of LCCs during the FY 2011 budget formulation process. LCCs are conservation-science partnerships between the Service, federal agencies, states, tribes, NGOs, universities, and other entities. They are fundamental units of planning and science capacity to help us carry out the functional elements of SHC -- biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, monitoring, and research -- and inform our strategic response to accelerated climate change. The Service's landscape conservation efforts are designed to meet 21st Century conservation challenges by ensuring that we accomplish the right things, in the right places, at the right times based on sound science. These efforts parallel changes occurring across the conservation and science communities as states, tribes, nongovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders recognize similar challenges and work together to preserve our nation’s fish and wildlife heritage.
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Landscape Conservation Cooperatives Landscape Conservation in Action
SHC Essentials: The National Ecological Assessment Team 2006 report
Our Vision: Conservation in Transition: Leading Change in the 21st Century
SHC Handbook
|
|||||||||||||||||
Last updated:
November 16, 2009
|