Wildlife Action Plan 2015 Revision Process White Paper
Global and Regional Status Metrics 2 through 4 consider global and regional status that in many cases will extend beyond the state’s boundaries. If a species is endemic to the state, we consider its range-wide distribution to be North Carolina. 2. Population Size, Range-wide. For our use in this evaluation, range is considered to be a geographic area represented by the outermost boundaries that encompass where a species occurs naturally (Suring et al. 2011) . Eforts to evaluate a species’ rarity can include measure- ments of population size as represented by geographic distribution and abundance (Manne and Pimm 2001; Witte and Torfs 2003; Kunin 1998) . Considering population size range-wide provides a comparison of how well a species population is doing overall when compared with pop- ulations within the state (Crain et al. 2011) . Te answer scale is adopted from the NatureServe evaluation tool (NatureServe 2012a) . Tis metric recognizes the importance of a species where it has overall low population sizes in other parts of its range (global or regional) but it may have a larger population within the state. For example, populations occurring within the state may be relatively large and represent a signifcant portion of the total known population for a species that has a range beyond North Carolina and may be experiencing declines or have low numbers in those areas (e.g., Eastern Hellbenders, Sanderlings). Te opposite may also be true—the popula- tion size in North Carolina may be small, but the overall population is large. For example, Eastern Coral Snake populations in North Carolina are considered critically imperiled, but it is common in parts of its range outside the state and does not appear to be signifcantly threated elsewhere (NatureServe 2012b) . Scores are assigned based on the estimated number of adults throughout the species’ range.
What is the estimated number of adults within the species’ range?
(a) 1–50 individuals
(b) 50–250 individuals
(c) 250–1,000 individuals
(d) 1,000–2,500 individuals
(e) 2,500–10,000 individuals
(f) 10,000–100,000 individuals
(g) 100,000–1,000,000 individuals
(h) >1,000,000 individuals
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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