Full ecoregional plan - Conservation Gateway

IntroductionEcoregional Planning in the Nature ConservancyThe Nature Conservancy’s mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and naturalcommunities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands andwaters they need to survive. The increasing rate of extinction in recent years has led tothe realization that conserving rare and threatened species and natural communities per seis insufficient to effectively protect biodiversity. In broadening the scope of its work, theConservancy has shifted towards protecting landscapes on an ecoregional scale.Planning by ecoregions, or areas that are unified in climate, topography, geology, andvegetation, is more sensible ecologically than planning within political boundaries suchas states or provinces. Ecoregional planning methods improve on the traditional approachof protecting rare species and terrestrial communities by expanding to include commonecosystems that are representative of each ecoregion. Protection of good examples ofthese representative ecosystems can serve as a “coarse filter,” protecting a broad diversityof both common and rare species. The methods chapters in this report explain andelaborate on the concepts introduced here, especially as they relate to ecoregionalplanning in the Northeast and East.Two criteria for assessing conservation sites have become part of the new thinking -“functionality” and size. Functional sites are simply those in which ecological processesare sufficiently intact to sustain focal species and natural communities over the long term.Size is important because large, complex, multi-scale and relatively intact conservationareas – or landscapes - are likely to be the most efficient and effective at conservingbiodiversity. These ideas have dovetailed with the developing need to identify examplesof common, widespread natural community types as conservation targets in ecoregionalportfolios, and have led to the inclusion of matrix-forming communities (especially forestcommunities in the Eastern U.S.) as a landscape-scale conservation target in ecoregionalplans.Ecoregional plans that address both the rare and the common, at the species, community,and landscape or watershed levels, will guide the Conservancy’s actions for years tocome. Using all available data on the distribution of ecosystems, communities, andspecies, Conservancy teams and our partners are working to design networks ofconservation areas within each ecoregion.Ecoregional plans identify a set of portfolio sites, or areas that need to be protected inorder to conserve the native biodiversity of the region into the future. The plan is aproduct of a collective initiative between many people and organizations whoparticipated in the project as partners, experts and advisors. Members of this cooperativeeffort generally include Conservancy staff, Natural Heritage Program scientists,university professionals, state and federal agencies, other conservation organizations, andlocal experts.Conservation sites that make up the portfolio generally range from small (several acres)to very large (tens of thousands of acres) sites. Local Conservancy units chose a subset ofthese sites, their ten-year action sites, where they will focus conservation activity in thenext ten years. For these areas, the Conservancy will develop detailed Conservation Area3/2003 INTRO-1