Full ecoregional plan - Conservation Gateway

concern:Declining speciesEndemic speciesDisjunct speciesPeripheral speciesVulnerable speciesFocal speciesCenters, but match one or more of the following criteria:Exhibit significant, long-term declines in habitat and/or numbers, aresubject to a high degree of threat, or may have unique habitat orbehavioral requirements that expose them to great risk.Restricted to the ecoregion (or a small geographic area within anecoregion), depending entirely on the ecoregion for survival, and maybe more vulnerable than species with a broader distribution.Have populations that are geographically isolated from otherpopulations.Are more widely distributed in other ecoregions but have populationsin this ecoregion at the edge of their geographical range.Are usually abundant and may or may not be declining, but someaspect of their life history makes them especially vulnerable (e.g.,migratory concentration or rare/endemic habitat).Have spatial, compositional, and functional requirements that mayencompass those of other species in the region and may helpaddress the functionality of ecological systems. Focal species caninclude:Keystone species: those whose impact on a community or ecologicalsystem is disproportionately large for their abundance. Theycontribute to ecosystem function in a unique and significant mannerthrough their activities. Their removal initiates changes in ecosystemstructure and often a loss of diversity.Wide-ranging species: regional-scale species that depend on vastareas. These species often include top-level predators (e.g., wolves,grizzly bear, pike minnow, killer whale), wide-ranging herbivores (e.g.,elk), and wide-ranging omnivores (e.g., black bear) but also migratorymammals, anadromous fish, birds, bats and some insects.The exhaustive initial list was whittled down to a smaller final set through discussion andagreement by technical teams of scientists familiar with the species in the ecoregion.Virtually all ecoregional assessments had separate technical teams for plant species andanimal species. Many regions also divided the zoology team further, having, for example,separate teams for birds, aquatic species, herptiles, mammals or invertebrates. Thecompiled results were rolled up to create the final species target list. To some extent thejustifications for including each target species have been archived in ecoregionaldatabases.No single defining factor guaranteed that a species would be confirmed as a primarytarget. Thoughtful consideration was given to each species’ range-wide distribution, thereasons for its rarity, the severity of its decline both locally and globally, its relationshipsto identifiable habitats and the importance of the ecoregion to its conservation. As the listwas refined, species were eliminated for different reasons. Some were removed becauseof questions about the taxonomic status of the species, others because they wereconsidered to be more common throughout their range than reflected in the current globalrank; the global rank for the latter species needs to be updated. Among species for whichdistribution information was considered to be inadequate, several were retained on aREVISED 6/2003SPP-3