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Ecoregional Assessments Available
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Photo: Foster Creek Conservation District |
By Jesse Langdon,
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy, in cooperation with partner organizations, has developed a suite of Ecoregional Assessments for all the ecoregions of the United States, including the nine that cover Washington State.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Washington Department of Natural Resources were major partners in developing these nine assessments.
Ecoregional assessments provide a regional scale, biodiversity-based context for implementing conservation efforts. They identify ecologically significant areas for conservation action with a goal of protecting representative biodiversity.
These actions may be any of a range of strategies, including: incentives for private landowners, acknowledging and encouraging best management practices on working landscapes, restoring degraded ecosystems, and putting land in conservation easements.
The assessments are the result of rigorous scientific analyses, incorporating an extensive expert review, and they are the most comprehensive and current efforts to set conservation priorities at a regional scale.
These assessments have resulted in a series of products useful to those working to conserve biodiversity in the Pacific Northwest. These products can be used alone, in conjunction with one another, or with other information to enhance conservation and communication about biodiversity values in the region.
The main products developed are:- A portfolio of high priority conservation areas, which include terrestrial, freshwater, and marine components.
- This portfolio highlights the most important and suitable areas for conservation of ecoregional biodiversity.
- A summary of known conservation target occurrences, land cover, and land use is provided for each of these conservation areas.
- Maps of relative conservation value of all lands and waters in each ecoregion.
- A compilation of the comprehensive biodiversity information and data that were used to develop the assessment.
- A thorough documentation of the assessment process, portfolio identification and site prioritization methods, and data management, so that future iterations of the assessment can build upon previous work.
Conservation practitioners can use the ecoregional assessments in a variety of ways. At the most basic level, the portfolio of priority conservation areas can serve as a guide to determine whether a new conservation project falls within an area of ecological significance for the ecoregion.
When current conservation projects fall within the boundary of a priority conservation area, detailed information about each area can be found in the assessment appendices, allowing practitioners to gain a regional perspective on work that is being conducted at a local, site-specific scale.
Digital copies of the reports, maps, appendices, and a basic level of GIS data for each ecoregional assessment can be downloaded for free by visiting The Nature Conservancy’s Washington Science and Planning Web Portal.
For access to more in-depth assessment data, please contact Jesse Langdon, Conservation Information Manager for The Nature Conservancy’s Washington Field Office.