After two years of review by Department of Natural Resources (DNR) staff, conservation organizations and public comment, the new conservation strategy for the DNR is heading into implementation phase. The plan will guide the wildlife-related work of DNR over the next decade.
The plan has to be submitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for review but parts of the plan are able to implemented immediately. Applications for next year’s Conserve Georgia grants and loans for the Georgia Outdoor Stewardship Program will have the added weight of priority areas identified in the new plan.
“The revision forces us to take a hard look at species in our state to ensure we are focusing conservation efforts on the right species and habitats,” said Brett Albanese, an assistant chief in DNR’s Wildlife Conservation Section. “It also gives us an opportunity to engage with the broader conservation community to tap into their knowledge and identify shared conservation priorities.”
The country’s main program to protect at-risk wildlife is the State and Tribal Wildlife Grants program, which provides funding for preventing new species getting added to the endangered list. Much of DNR’s state funding is dedicated to game wildlife, such as fish or deer, but non-game wildlife that may be candidates for inclusion on the endangered list rely heavily on funding from fundraisers like specialty license plates, such as the monarch butterfly, state tax checkoff contributions and donations.
The first Wildlife Action Plan was created in 2005 and is updated every ten years. Once an animal is endangered, ridged (and costly) protections come into effect and the plan helps to keep species like the gopher tortoise, tricolored bats and yellow pitcherplants from getting added to the list. There are more than 1,000 species that were identified as “species of greatest need,” with factors such as global conservation and available date taken into account. For example, if the gopher tortoise were coming close to endangered in Georgia, but Alabama was awash in the keystone species whose holes provide habitat for so many other animals, it might be slightly less favored.
New changes to the plan include updated status checks on native animals and plants, best practices for conserving species and habitats and new maps to improve conservation efficiency on public lands and waters. The plan also aims to enhance and develop voluntary efforts on private lands. Big projects from DNR, such as the creation of the Ceylon Wildlife Management Area and the expansion of Paulding Forest WMA, were funded due to the essential habitat for wildlife as identified in previous versions of the plan.
To see the full plan and explore the extremely-detailed plan:
https://ga-state-wildlife-action-plan-gadnrwrd.hub.arcgis.com/
