Because of our expertise in conservation science and landscape planning, The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee was asked to assist the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) in completing its first State Wildlife Action Plan in 2005.
Mandated by Congress, State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) are intended to be a blueprint for conservation of at-risk wildlife. SWAPs assess each state’s wildlife and habitats, identify the problems they face, and outline the actions needed to conserve them over the long term. SWAPs must be updated every 10 years.
TWRA returned to us to help them do a top-to-bottom update to the plan for 2015. To complete the update, we led a two-year planning process which incorporated the input of over 50 agencies and organizations and 100 technical experts and created a new website and communications platform for the effort.
A key component of the TN-SWAP planning effort is the GIS and relational database management system created by The Nature Conservancy originally in 2005. Over time, this system has been used to manage the large amounts of data on Tennessee’s plant and animal species of Greatest Conservation Need, their habitats, and problems affecting them.
This tool puts the map of Tennessee into sharp relief for natural resource managers. In completing the 2015 TN-SWAP, the team was able to explicitly map biodiversity priorities across the state as well as where those priorities intersect with major land and water uses. Together this information provides a conservation blueprint for the next decade, identifying where and how to focus our conservation investments.
