Wildlife Action Plan 2015 Revision Process White Paper
2005 Prioritization Process Te need for an iterative process to identify species conservation priorities was acknowl- edged during development of the 2005 North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan (WAP). To meet the need, a Technical Team comprised of North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission (NCWRC) biologists considered a number of diferent planning and prioritization eforts in order to evaluate the utility of using a preexisting methodology versus developing a new process. Criteria included consideration for species that are currently rare or designated as at-risk, those for which we have knowledge defciencies, and those that have not received adequate conservation attention in the past. Te USFWS, NatureServe, Partners In Flight, American Fisheries Society, and numerous other organizations regularly generate lists of species for which they have conservation concern or which warrant levels of protection. It would be easy to use one or more of these lists as a means of identifying priority species, but the varying methodologies were con- sidered insufcient for identifying vulnerable taxa at a scale relevant to North Carolina (Breininger et al. 1998) . Following the 2005 review team’s evaluation, it was determined that an independent prioritization process would best meet the goals for identifying North Carolina’s SGCN and priority species. Te following requirements were used to develop the SGCN and priority species list:
• Consider all species within each taxon (regardless of status or threat) at the start of the process;
• Collect information not previously measured in existing prioritization eforts (e.g., degree of knowledge about a species); and
• Develop a process that refects the NCWRC’s mission and goals since the agency carries responsibility and authority for managing the state’s wildlife resources. Te 2005 ranking evaluations focused on eight taxonomic groups based on jurisdictional and traditional programmatic boundaries. Te groups were amphibians, birds, crayfsh, freshwater fsh, freshwater snails, freshwater mussels, mammals, and reptiles. Teams of species experts (Taxa Teams) were convened to evaluate taxonomic groups using review criteria that considered conservation concern and knowledge for each species. Taxa Team member responses to the review criteria resulted in ranking scores for each species that were used to develop a prioritized species list. Chapter 2 in the 2005 WAP more fully describes the prioritization review process and provides lists of SGCN and priority species by taxa group (NCWRC 2005).
Following publication of the 2005 WAP, members of the Technical and Taxa Teams reviewed the ranking criteria and prioritization process and recommended future
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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