Fish and Wildlife Service

The Right Conservation in the Right Places

Strategic habitat conservation (SHC) 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. These are critical steps in dealing with a range of landscape-scale resource threats such as development, invasive species, and water scarcity--all magnified by accelerating climate change.

SHC Elements: Biological Planning, Conservation Design, Delivery, Monitoring, and Research. Credit: USFWS. SHC incorporates five key principles in an ongoing process that changes and evolves:

Biological Planning (setting targets)
Conservation Design (developing a plan to meet the goals)
Conservation Delivery (implementing the plan)
Monitoring and Adaptive Management (measuring success and improving results)
Research (increasing our understanding)

To ensure we’re putting science in the right places, the Service and USGS have developed a national geographic framework for implementing strategic habitat conservation at landscape scales. The framework will provide a platform upon which the Service can work with partners to connect project- and site-specific efforts to larger biological goals and outcomes across the continent.

The framework serves as a base geography for Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs), which are management-science partnerships that inform integrated resource management actions addressing climate change and other stressors within and across landscapes. LCCs are fundamental units of planning and science capacity to help us carry out the functional elements of SHC.

Strategic habitat conservation is 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.

New! Landscape Conservation in Action

SHC General Fact Sheet

SHC and Climate Change Fact Sheet

Science Excellence Home

Strategic Habitat Conservation Home

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives