Chapter 8 Review, Coordination, Revision and Next Steps
members, participating agencies, and the structure of the committees and workgroups involved in the revision process and letters of support from partner groups are provided in Appendix 1-5.
8.2 Review and Revision Steps: 2025 North Carolina’s comprehensive review and revision began in 2021, when a letter of notification was sent to the USFWS notifying the agency that the 10-year review and revision process was being initiated. The SWAP Steering Committee was convened by the Wildlife Action Plan Coordinator with the NCWRC (Commission). The Steering Committee was composed of senior leadership from the NCWRC and a conservation partner who is a member of the NCWRC’s Nongame Wildlife Advisory Committee (NWAC). The Steering Committee provided policy and decision oversight, ensuring the SWAP followed USFWS guidance and requirements while also representing the NCWRC’s mission and the conservation priorities of partners, stakeholders, and interested citizens statewide. The collaborative efforts and extensive assistance from biologists and staff from many organizations and agencies across the state were involved in developing and expanding text, identifying supporting materials (i.e., maps, figures, tables, reports), and assimilating existing conservation planning resources. It is with great appreciation that we acknowledge their contributions. 8.2.1 Work Groups Several work groups were convened throughout the process and tasked with considering specific topics and actions relevant to the SWAP revision. A work group was formed early in the review process to reevaluate the SGCN evaluation method and consider whether modifications were needed or whether the evaluation process should be replaced with another method. The final recommendation was to retain the current method and allow each taxa team to adjust the scoring parameters used to determine SGCN. This decision was made because the evaluation method is applied to each taxa group the same way whereas each taxa group has unique life histories. For example, the Bird Taxa Team members consider whether a species is in our state year-round, only during its breeding season, or only for winter habitat use. In contrast, amphibian populations have a completely different life history and are present year-round. However, amphibians have different breeding requirements and are less likely to move great distances to find suitable breeding habitat. Another work group was convened to consider updating the method and process for determining Conservation Opportunity Areas (COAs) based on updated data and improved analysis capabilities. The COA process used for the 2015 SWAP was based on Southeast GAP data, which addressed only terrestrial wildlife and did not cover all SGCN species. The work group recommended using the SECAS Blueprint data as a basis for analyzing opportunity areas and to consider where current or recent known populations of wildlife exist (element
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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