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Christopher Tracey

Despite its successes, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has proven challenging to implement due to funding limitations, workload backlog, and other problems. As threats to species survival intensify and as more species come under threat, the need for the ESA and similar conservation laws and policies in other countries to function efficiently has grown. Attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to streamline ESA decisions include multispecies recovery plans and habitat conservation plans. We address species status assessment (SSA), a USFWS process to inform ESA decisions from listing to recovery, within the context of multispecies and ecosystem planning. Although existing SSAs have a single-species...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Abstract (from U.S. Geological Survey): The unglaciated southeastern United States is a biodiversity hotspot, with a disproportionate amount of this biodiversity concentrated in grasslands. Like most hotspots, the Southeast is also threatened by human activities, with the total reduction of southeastern grasslands estimated as 90 percent (upwards to 100 percent for some types) and with many threats escalating today. This report summarizes the results of a multistakeholder workshop organized by the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative and the U.S. Geological Survey, held in January 2020 to provide a scientific needs assessment to help inform the Species Status Assessment (SSA) process under the U.S. Endangered Species...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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In recognition of the need for landscape-scale planning to address the conservation challenges of the Midwestern United States, the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies passed a resolution endorsing the Midwest Landscape Initiative, a collaborative that identifies shared conservation priorities and develops solutions for healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Midwest (MAFWA 2019). To address these goals the Midwest Landscape Initiative identified an opportunity to create a regional terrestrial habitat system that could provide consistent and structured description of natural and cultural habitats across the region. The regional habitat data aids partners by providing a common lexicon through which conservation...
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Midwest Terrestrial Habitat System
In recognition of the need for landscape-scale planning to address the conservation challenges of the Midwestern United States, the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies passed a resolution endorsing the Midwest Landscape Initiative, a collaborative that identifies shared conservation priorities and develops solutions for healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Midwest (MAFWA 2019). To address these goals the Midwest Landscape Initiative identified an opportunity to create a regional terrestrial habitat system that could provide consistent and structured description of natural and cultural habitats across the region. The regional habitat data aids partners by providing a common lexicon through which conservation...
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