ANALYSIS OF AVIAN NORTH AMERICAN MIGRATORY FLYWAY USE TO ENABLE EFFECTIVE CONSERVATION OF SPECIES IN GREATEST CONSERVATION NEED

A State Wildlife Action Plan is a comprehensive assessment of a state’s wildlife and wildlife-related issues submitted by the Fish and Wildlife Management agencies of every state. These plans lay out actions necessary to conserve wildlife and their habitat within each state and prevent endangered species listings. Congress has mandated that these action plans be reviewed and revised every ten years to identify the species of greatest conservation need within each state. In addition, these plans provide the basis for state access to funding from the Fish and Wildlife Service State and Tribal Wildlife Grants Program to target such species and enable effective conservation efforts. Our goal is to develop a better understanding of the species in greatest need of conservation and investigate effective conservation efforts to recover species populations. To do this, we analyzed USGS data from State Wildlife Action Plans, the Protected Areas Database, and the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics consortium to observe land characteristics used by the species in need of conservation. We used R to analyze avian species data according to their migratory flyway patterns. Using these data, we assessed how to best use species information to help develop a consistent and reproducible method for developing species data needed for conservation efforts. Our data are open to the public and intended to be accessed by national, regional, and state wildlife researchers, conservationists, and concerned citizens to identify habitats in need of conservation. This work is supported by the U.S. Geological Survey as part of UNAVCO Geo-Launchpad program.