FWS ACJV ACJV_focus_areas

Map of ACJV bird focus Areas These are ALL BIRD FOCUS areas from BCR plans. These areas are now primarily used for NAWCA grants Partners in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture (ACJV) have identified 13 planning areas and 136 waterfowl specific focus areas. Through this process more than 45 million hectares (>113 million acres) are targeted for conservation actions that will benefit waterfowl and other wetland dependent wildlife. Members of the ACJV Waterfowl Technical Committee (now the Gamebird Technical Committee) were provided hard copy maps of areas thought to be important to migrating or wintering waterfowl showing existing wetland resources (available NWI data) and USGS DRG land use. Individuals were asked to modify previous focus area boundaries (unpublished). Where major changes were proposed, ACJV staff worked with committee members to provide the appropriate spatial data needed to delineate new focal areas. The update process took place between November 2003 and February 2005 with the exception of Puerto Rico. Minor revisions were accepted through June 2005. T. Jones and K. Luke worked with personnel from Puerto Rico's Department of Natural & Environmental Resources in 2006 and 2007 to revise waterfowl focus areas for the Commonwealth. These focus areas were meant to be interim products for the period 2005 - 2010. The first meeting of the South Atlantic Migratory Bird Initiative (SAMBI) occurred in June 1999. Biologists, managers, etc. from the five state area met to build the framework of SAMBI. Focus area maps for each major bird group by state were derived from expert opinion and drawn on to 1:250,000 topographic maps provided to the experts. These experts represented federal, state, and non-governmental organizations with expertise in each of the bird groups. The specific dates of the meeting where these maps were derived were June 22-23, 1999, and were held at the Webb Wildlife Center near Garnett, South Carolina. At this time, focus area maps for Florida and Virginia were not delineated, as the appropriate experts were not present at this meeting to do so. The maps delineated during this meeting were digitized by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Coastal Program in the Charleston Ecological Services Office in Charleston, South Carolina. The focus area maps came to be known at “all bird” focus areas under the framework of the North American Bird Conservation Initiative (NABCI) and SAMBI (the first attempt at BCR planning within the ACJV). The purpose of this first meeting was to initiate bird conservation planning for “all birds across all habitats” under the framework of NABCI. The Management Board of the ACJV had recently met in Orlando, Florida and voted unanimously for the ACJV to become an “all bird” Joint Venture and begin the process of integrated bird conservation planning, that is integrating all the planning efforts of major bird conservation initiatives currently under way in North America. Those currently under way in the south Atlantic region were Partners In Flight, United States Shorebird Conservation Plan, Waterbirds for the Americas, and the North American Waterfowl Management Plan. To develop “all bird” focus area maps for the South Atlantic Coastal Plain geographies of Virginia and Florida, ACJV staff traveled to and met with the appropriate bird experts to delineate similar areas for these states in 2004. In the exercise with Florida, nearshore and offshore focus areas were also delineated, something that the other states did not attempt. Additionally, as some states developed initiatives and produced focus areas for Northern Bobwhite and other early successional/grassland species, these maps were incorporated into the SAMBI Implementation Plan. In 2002, the South Carolina SAMBI Working Group recognized that some of their “all bird” focus areas were not consistent with other states in the SAMBI planning area and initiated an effort to revise focus areas to be consistent with other SAMBI states and to reflect new knowledge and data sources to assist in revising SAMBI “all bird” focus areas. This meeting occurred in 2007. No changes were made to the waterfowl focus area for South Carolina. However, changes were made to the landbird, shorebird, waterbird, and early successional/grassland bird focus areas. Again, new knowledge, better land cover data, and input from other bird conservation organizations were used to revise these maps. Data used were the latest from SE ReGap land cover data, and Audubon SC focus area maps were used for input into the revision. The landbird map was made into four maps from the initial one map, being broke out my four major habitat types: forested wetlands, open pine, maritime forest, and early successional/grassland. These new focus areas were digitized by GIS staff for the ACJV. The result was South Carolina having 7 “all bird” focus areas, one for shorebirds, waterbirds, and waterfowl, and four habitat based focus areas for landbirds. Discussions were held to determine if other states should use this process to update focus areas for their state. It was decided that states could pursue this with the assistance of the ACJV, but the ACJV’s Designing Sustainable Landscapes Project would most likely provide a priority surface for conservation for priority species in all the major bird groups, and therefore, decided not to expend additional effort to follow the process that South Carolina followed. Finally, the waterfowl focus areas in the SAMBI Implementation Plan are identical to those in the ACJV Waterfowl Implementation Plan (WIP). During the process of writing the ACJV WIP, adjustments were made to waterfowl focus areas for the SAMBI states. States had previously identified focus areas, but under new guidance for what a waterfowl focus area should be in the new ACJV WIP, adjustments were made in many states, including those in the SAMBI region. The development of continental bird conservation plans set the stage for implementation at smaller geographic scales and led to the development of implementation plans specific to species groups and BCRs. Within the New England/Mid-Atlantic Coast Bird Conservation Region (BCR 30), the Partners in Flight initiative, the U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan, the Waterbird Conservation of the Americas initiative, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, and the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative have identified bird conservation priorities by setting population goals at the either the continental, national, or regional scales. States have developed State Wildlife Action Plans that identify what needs to be done to conserve wildlife and the natural lands and waters where they live, including species management needs and priorities. The purpose of the BCR 30 Plan is to bring the common goals of these plans together into one format that can be used by state agencies, NGOs, and other bird conservation interests to coordinate and implement bird conservation activities. This plan merges material from numerous plans and workshops, including Partners in Flight physiographic plans and BCR 30 Plan, Atlantic Coast Joint Venture Waterfowl Implementation Plan, Northern Atlantic Shorebird conservation Plan, Mid-Atlantic New England Maritimes Regional Waterbird Plan, State Wildlife Action Plans, and the results of the BCR 30 Coordinated Monitoring Workshop and the December 2004 BCR 30 All-Bird Conservation Workshop (summary in Appendix F of BCR 30 Plan at: https://www.acjv.org/bcr30.htm). Data were derived from hand drawn maps, with focus areas delineated by 65 bird conservation experts, representing governmental and non-governmental organizations from the United States and Canada, at a workshop in Alexandria Bay, NY, April 17-19, 2001. The purpose of the workshop was to review the status of each of the migratory bird initiative plans developed at that point, in each country, in order to identify priority migratory bird species, and the priority habitats needed by these priority species, begin discussion on the process for setting population and habitat goals, and define new or revise existing focus areas for the Lower Great Lakes / St. Lawrence Plain Bird Conservation Region (i.e., BCR 13). The preliminary data were collated, presented, reviewed, and refined at another workshop, November 28-29 in Montreal, Quebec, attended by forty-five biologists from the U.S. and Canada, including some land managers who had not attended the previous workshop. Final maps were produced by Chuck Hayes of the ACJV, who worked with biologists in every state and province in BCR 13 to refine polygon shapes, sizes, and exact boundaries.